The Big Empty
by gf7
Summary: In the aftermath of Revelations, the team faces off against a serial killer that is at play in their own backyard. A butcher whose brazen actions forces everyone to confront their demons. Violence and language.
1. JJ

I. JJ

A booming car alarm went off around two-thirty in the morning. The kind that makes a person believe that the bloody apocalypse is coming. Not that she'd been actually sleeping anyway, FBI Special Agent Jennifer Jareau, JJ to her friends, opened her weary eyes. Without even bothering to look, she knew exactly where the obnoxious and intrusive sound was coming from.

Three houses to the left. Gibson Barrett. Twenty-six. Wickedly handsome, winningly charismatic and arrogant as all living hell. They'd gone out once.. Mostly because he was cute and somewhat charming. Disarmingly so, if she were to be honest about it.

At least he had been at first. All of that that had ended about the time he'd oh so suavely informed her that him buying her a forty dollar steak dinner actually meant that he was buying a night of rock and roll fun in the sack with her. And gosh, wasn't she just such the lucky lady?

She groaned, remembering just how bad of a night that had been. To his credit, Barrett had eventually accepted her refusal to sleep with him. At least for that night. And to be honest, it hadn't come easy. He'd called her a few names, told her she was making a mistake and assured her that she'd regret it. She's remained non-responsive to his words of love, all the while her mind considering exactly how far up his ass her high-heeled boot could get.

The alarm continued to ring through the neighborhood, wailing violently. A dog a few houses down the street started to bark and involuntarily, JJ shivered, her body suddenly going quite cold. Which was silly and ridiculous really, because she knew the name of that crazy little mutt. Toby. He was an overexcited tri-colored Jack Russell who was prone to wetting himself whenever anyone would see fit to pet him a time or two.

He was harmless, gentle and even pretty cute.

And she was terrified of him.

To herself, she mused that Gibson was a bit like a dog, too. Cute just like Toby. And just like Toby, he didn't quite know how to take "no" for an answer. He didn't know how to stay away long after he'd been shooed away.

Next door, a far too bright light went on in a townhouse. It was the same model as hers. Two stories. Modern. Useful. Damned expensive. Again, she knew without looking what was going on in that house. Knew exactly who lived there and what he was doing.

Jim Murdock. He was a grouchy older man in his fifties whose starry-eyed and much younger wife had left him in the fall. Angry and five seconds from blasting off into orbit, Murdock was the kind of fellow she tried to avoid at all costs. When she had no choice but to exchange a forced hello, she did her best to escape the scene quickly. Often she failed. Far too often she was forced to endure fifteen to twenty minutes worth of how the world was going to hell in a handbasket.

She always wanted to say, "If you only knew, sir." What she usually managed to get out was, "Yeah, yeah."

Now, surely standing in front of his oversized window wearing little but a tiny terrifyingly sheer pair of bleached white boxers, Jim Murdock suddenly screamed out, "Turn that fucking thing off!"

JJ laughed, but it was more a sound of pathetic misery than legitimate mirth. Exhaustion, wariness, and perhaps even a wee bit of depression slapped down against her brow like a ton of bricks. Sleep was hard enough to come by these days without the addition of loud noises. As it was, she was averaging an hour, maybe two before the dreams would come.

They always started the same. With those horrible dogs. Jaws wide, drool and blood dripping down off of their impossibly sharp fangs.

Then the dream – "no", JJ softly chided herself aloud, "call it what it is, a nightmare" – would mutate. Sometimes the dogs would grow in numbers. From three to five or six. More often though, their numbers stayed the same, they just became more brutal. And when they did, they hurt like hell.

Dreams be damned, she could feel the bites, the mauling, the God awful tearing. She could hear it as well. The sound of flesh being torn from bone, ripped away like beef jerky. And her screams, her nightmarish screams, they echoed. Sometimes even into the day. Sometimes it was the fury of her screaming which brought her back to the world of the living.

But still, if it had ended there, with being shredded alive by the beasts, with waking up blankets soaked with sweat and shaking like a leaf, tears in her eyes and her throat raw, she could have dealt. She could have rationalized it.

Called it part of the job and moved right on down the road.

Ah, but no, they never stopped there. The nightmares always took another turn. Towards him. Towards what she'd seen on the computer screens. How those poor people had been butchered by Tobias. And in her dreams, it was Reid who was being slashed. It was Spencer Reid who was being cut down as if he were no more than corn stalk on harvest day.

Bad enough what had actually happened to him, but the nightmares made it so much worse.

And so, instead of waking up with a few tears in her eyes, maybe even a few escaping down her cheeks, she often woke up screaming his name.

But that was her secret. She wouldn't tell. Couldn't tell. Not anymore that Reid could or would tell his secret.

Something was very wrong with him. She could see that. They all could. Well of course they could. It was their job – "not mine, theirs" she reminded herself - to be able to look into a person's eyes and immediately know what made them tick. But for a reason none of them could quite understand – certainly not she - they'd all decided to step back and give him his space.

Let him heal himself, right? Let him work it out. Because they believed in him. Knew he could do it. Right?

Bullshit. Guilt. That's all it was. Fucking guilt.

And as she dwelled on her own pangs of remorseful responsibility, the alarm continued to wail, seeming to get louder with each passing moment. Blowing out air between her teeth, JJ turned a bit in her bed, towards the sound.

She could see the reflections of more lights in the neighborhood snapping on. Then came Murdock's voice again, "I'm going to come down there and kick your ass if you don't quiet that Goddamn thing, Barrett!"

JJ snorted derisively. Murdock was tiny compared to Barrett. Barrett was strong and healthy, youthful and exuberant. Murdock would be insane to take him on. But maybe he had a gun, she thought grimly. A gun could do a lot. It could even the playing field. It could kill a man dead. Dogs, too.

The alarm seemed to get louder, which considering the fact that it was already screaming at a deafening decibel, seemed impossible.

JJ rolled over and reached across the nightstand closest to her, towards where a bottle of sleeping pills was sitting. She stared at it, frowning with the awareness that maybe she'd been using the little blue capsules a bit too often these days. After a moment, she tossed that thought away.

Sleep, she reminded herself. She needed sleep. Come morning, she'd be expected to be her usual chipper and composed self. The team knew that something was wrong with Reid. She had no interest in giving them something else to worry about. Especially since she wasn't even sure she had the right to be worries about.

More guilt then, yes. Responsibility.

She was the senior agent. She'd let them separate. She'd left his back unguarded. And then…

Growling in frustration, trying desperately not to go down that mental road again – for the ten billionth time – she grabbed the bottle, yanked the cap off and popped two blue pills into her mouth and then washed them down quickly with lukewarm water that tasted oddly of cardboard.

As she put the bottle back down, her blue eyes caught on her black iPod, which was lying on its side on the nightstand. It was recharging itself, juicing up after being completely drained on the trip back from New Orleans.

For a moment she thought about the handsome detective she'd met there. He'd been sweet and handsome and a hell of a distraction for the demons in her mind. And while she'd been there, she'd even slept a bit. Which was ironic, really.

But still, she had.

Because for a few days, her nightmares had seemed like idiotic child's play next to the right here and now of the vicious Jack the Ripper style murders.

But that was then. And in the quiet of a night without a case to keep her feet and mind moving, the dreams were free to flow back. And she was free to dwell on the guilt buzzing deep within her soul. Like flies flocking hungrily to spoiling human flesh.

JJ sighed, tried to shake the mental image away. She plucked up the iPod and the accompanying earphones and shoved them into her ears. She pushed play and let the music flood her head. She didn't recognize the song that started up, it was something off a playlist that Morgan had created for her before everything had begun.

The song was loud. Too loud for her. The words blurred together, made no sense. She wondered idly if maybe the pills were already kicking in.

But in the end, she didn't actually care one way or the other. She only cared that the sound of the alarm had finally been blocked out.


	2. Reid

II. REID

The strange little clock on the wall, the one with all the numbers in the wrong places, the one that only made sense if you knew how to see the angles that connected everything, said that it was just after two in the morning. Good thing that, because the night sky certainly wasn't telling. The blinds were drawn tight, permitting not even a sliver of light to break through. Not even the moon.

He wouldn't have – no, couldn't have – had it any other way.

He stood naked in front of the mirror in his bathroom, meeting his own eyes. They were somehow hollow and empty. Below them were purplish rings made even darker by the contrast of his pale skin. He lifted a finger up and gently touched the puffiness below his left eyesocket.

"Side effects include," Spencer Reid started quietly, "Anxiety."

He smiled a bit. He certainly had that one down. Every moment of every day felt like an exercise in self-control. Like he was spending every second reminding himself to keep it together.

Wasn't really working out for him.

"Dizziness," he continued. Then he nodded slowly. Yeah, there had been a few bouts of that. Luckily, there had always been a chair nearby and no one had seemed to notice how he'd lunged for it.

"Fear," he whispered, a small tremor making its way through his thin frame.

Fear. There was a good one. He feared just about everything these days. From his well-meaning comrades at work all the way down to the postman.

But it was more than that. It was a simple touch as someone brushed by. It was the loud crack of a car backfiring.

Both were equally likely to send him into another fit.

Both were equally likely to send him reaching for the Dilaudid.

"Impairment of mental and physical performance," Reid forced out, his voice breaking a bit. Just a bit.

No, thank God, not yet. To be honest, work was the only thing keeping him going. Even if it was likely the thing that was keeping him spinning as well.

Still, he knew that they knew. Maybe not that he was taking the drugs, certainly not that he'd actually gone out an purchased a vial or two on his own. But yeah, they knew that something was wrong with him.

And every day he waited for the moment when one of them would ask. When one of them would get sick of dancing around the issue.

Some days he was sure it'd be Hotch. The leader.

But, no. More likely Morgan. The guy who saw himself as the big brother.

Surely not JJ. She had her own issues. She was just better at hiding it. Looking at her, he could see the shadows beneath her eyes, the ones that mirrored his own. But because she could smile and laugh, everyone assumed she was okay. Everyone assumed that she'd dealt and moved on.

"Mood swings," he told his mirror self.

And that brought up Emily Prentiss. The only one who seemed willing to call him on his behavioral swings. The only one who wouldn't just let it be. She was new to the team. Well not exactly. She'd been there for almost six months now, but it was easier to call her new, to say she didn't know, couldn't know. That way he could keep her at arm's distance. That way he could keep her out of his closet.

But still she persisted.

Funny how she was more dangerous to him and his secret than any of the people he called friends. The ones who knew him probably better than he knew himself.

Turning a bit to his side, Reid picked up his messenger bag. He slid his long fingers into the front pouch and removed a small vial. The liquid was mostly clear. He turned it a bit, stared at it. It seemed so harmless.

It was killing him.

Still, he couldn't stop. He barely needed to even look anymore. He barely needed to think about what he was doing. Eyes still on the mirror, still watching his own reflection, he prepped his arm and then injected himself.

Seconds ticked by. Maybe minutes. Time meant very little these days.

Then, he started anew.

"Anxiety," he said, voice trembling.

And now he really felt it. His skin was alive, every nerve alternately burning and singing. He didn't know if he felt like flying or dying.

"Dizziness," he put in, his hands clenching and unclenching.

Nope. That one seemed absent.

"Fear."

Nuh uh. Not right now. Right now he felt invincible. Unafraid. He could make that shot if needed.

The kill shot.

The one that had killed Charles.

No, not Charles. Tobias. It was Tobias who had suffered.

"Me or him," Reid grunted out, feeling a flash of anger burst up through him. He wondered why he felt at all guilty for what had happened to Tobias. He'd been the one tortured. He was the one who was suffering.

Not Tobias. Not Hotch. Not Morgan. Not even JJ.

His hands started shaking, almost spasming as the anger turned to fury.

JJ who should have had his back.

A voice, a very small voice at that, in the back of his mind cried out, "No, no, you're the one who separated, not her."

But he ignored the voice, pushed it back. Didn't care. That voice was his rational mind and he had no use for that right now.

She had made it through with barely a scratch. Sure, a dog had bit her. So what. So damn what. She was fine. She didn't wake up every morning trying to figure out how many doses she'd need to make it through the day.

"You don't know that," the little voice called out desperately. "You've seen her eyes, you know she isn't right either."

He snorted derisively.

So she couldn't sleep. Big deal. He hadn't been able to sleep before Tobias.

"You just want to blame someone. Anyone. You want someone to be responsible for this," the voice insisted.

And that was true. In his darkest moment, when the drug was in full bloom within his system, Spencer Reid wanted someone to pay for what had happened to him. His rational side reminded him that the one who was responsible had already died, but somehow that wasn't enough.

It just wasn't right.

It wasn't fair. Life for everyone else got to go on. Hotch had a baby to go home to, Morgan had his social life to turn to and JJ, well JJ could flirt easily and casually with that New Orleans cop. Like nothing had happened.

Like everything was just fine and dandy.

"You need to stop this," the little voice said. "You were always afraid of this. And you're…you're letting it happen. You. Not them. Not her. You."

He knew what the voice was talking about. Schizophrenia.

Reid closed his eyes. The anger was still there, stifling the fear. Refusing to let the panic show through. But the truth, under it all, the truth was still there.

Drug use could bring about a psychotic break. Or in his case, schizophrenia. And with his family history…

The fury surged again. Reaching forward, he slammed his fist into the mirror. It shattered loudly, shards of glass splintering in various directions. Blinking, aware of what he'd just done, he looked down at his bloody hand.

It didn't hurt.

Weird.

He glances up at the mirror, saw his fractured reflection starring back at him. Saw how divided and mutilated it appeared to be.

And somehow, that was strangely appropriate and true.

Exiting the bathroom, hand still dripping blood onto the carpet, he turned towards the funky clock. It was almost three. He needed to lie down. The drug would help him sleep now. It would help him get the two hours he needed.

It would make everything better.

He figured it couldn't really make anything worse.

And in the distance, in the fog of her mind, Reid thought he could hear a police siren wailing.

He could care less.


	3. Hotch

III. HOTCH

SSA Aaron Hotchner rubbed his palms together, the pads of each glancing off each other, creating friction. It was a nervous habit, not one needed to create warmth. More something he did to tell himself that it was time to get down to business. As he turned his attention back to the overwhelming stack of papers beneath him, his eyes flickered up towards his coffee cup.

A small voice in his head reminded him that he was trying to cut down on caffeine, so hey, maybe a sip later. But not right now because if he drank it right now, he'd just need to refill it in a few minutes and gosh, how would that be cutting down?

With some amusement, he wondered if maybe that voice belonged to his wife.

Turning away from the coffee cup, putting off the inevitable for a few moments, he glanced down at his watch. 9:16. Maybe it would have been easier to look up at the clock on the wall, but he was a creature of habit. And that meant keeping time next to him.

Because you just never knew when it'd get away from you.

Ah, but it'd been a busy morning already. Not even ten yet and he'd already fielded two extremely agitated calls from senators concerned about cases the team was either working at or looking at in their districts. Everything was political. He understood that, but still, sometimes it got obnoxious. Sometimes he just wanted to tell these people, some of them old friends, to just go the hell away and let him do his job.

Oh and then of the course there were the after action reports that the team had filed about their trip to New Orleans. They needed to be edited, sent back for corrections, re-edited and then filed away.

He sighed. This was a part of the job he could gladly do without. Reaching down, he picked up one of the reports. Reid's. Meticulously typed and without grammatical error, it was still somehow, not right.

But how, just how, Hotch wasn't quite sure. Not yet anyway.

Reaching out, Hotch lifted up his mug of coffee and brought it to his lips. He stopped just before he allowed the dark fluid to slide into his mouth. He considered it for a second, heard the voice again remind him "you're cutting down" and then without further hesitation, he gulped it down.

No way that voice could have been the wife. No way he'd have blown her off so easily. No way she'd have let him, he thought was a bemused inner chuckle.

Pushing himself to his feet, hearing just a bit of a creak in his left knee, he exited his office and stepped out into the open office area known affectionately as the bullpen.

And from what he could see, the day was already in full bloom.

In the middle of the floor, leaning casually against his desk was Derek Morgan. His posture was easy, his weight effortlessly shifted. He was chatting with Emily Prentiss. They were laughing, teasing each other.

He heard the words "worst date ever" come from Prentiss's mouth. And then Morgan replied, "Trust me, girl, I can beat you."

And in spite of his reservations about the newest member to his team – reservations that were born more of how she'd come to them rather than how she'd acted among them – he found himself thankful that she was bonding so well with others, becoming part of the group.

Only Reid seemed to have an issue with her these days.

But then again, Reid had an issue with everyone and everything these days.

Hotch turned slightly, taking in the sight of Garcia in the kitchenette, buttering up a cut in half bagel. When she crossed back into the bullpen, she delivered a plate to Morgan and Prentiss. Both shot her grateful looks, Morgan even going so far as to quickly loop an arm around the quirky blonde woman. He said something to her and she responded with a full laugh, one that made her face positively light up.

"Interesting group, no?" a voice from Hotch's left said. He didn't need to turn.

"Indeed," Hotch replied, with a small smile. "How was your weekend?"

"Quiet. All one can ask for," Jason Gideon replied. "Yours?"

"I changed diapers," Hotch said, a bit triumphantly.

Gideon laughed. "Amazing, huh? We save more lives than can probably be calculated, but sometimes nothing means more than five minutes alone with the little guy."

Hotch nodded, his chin lifting a bit as he saw Doctor Spencer Reid enter. Reid looked a bit unorganized, but with him it was hard to tell of that was his natural scattered nature on display(due to just too damn many things going on inside his brain) or if it was the after affect of whatever the hell it was that was kicking his ass.

Drugs. Alcohol. Something.

Something that he knew would have to be dealt with very soon.

Very soon.

"Morning, Reid," Hotch tossed out, voice even and controlled.

Reid looked up at him, dark circles under his eyes. For a moment Hotch mused that were he a woman, Reid would have known to cover those up. A little make up went a long way.

JJ could attest for that.

She looked great, but the weariness of her body, the morose looks he sometimes caught when she didn't think anyone was watching, those told the tale.

But that was JJ.

Reid had always had circles under his eyes; he probably thought no one would notice how dark, deep and ugly they'd gotten to be.

Everyone had noticed.

"Hotch," Reid said easily, like nothing in the world was bothering him. He'd gotten awful good at hiding things, but Hotch wasn't a profiler for nothing.

"Good weekend?"

Reid shrugged. "Need coffee," he said then, making a quick escape. As he fled towards the kitchenette, moving past Morgan, Prentiss and Garcia, Hotch turned towards Gideon, who gave him a look that said he knew.

And soon, soon it would be dealt with.

Then, to change the subject, Gideon mused:

"JJ's late."

And this was true. And rare.

JJ was their media liaison, but in fairness she was much more than that now, a junior profiler even if she didn't quite realize it. Far more than just a well oiled media flack. Every bit a part of the team.

And she was always punctual. Always. Always.

But things were different now, had been since Tobias. And for more than just Reid. She'd been shaken up by that day as well.

Thing was, she'd seemed alright.

She seemed to have dealt.

But again, Hotch wasn't a profiler for nothing.

"It's early," he said just the same. "Traffic."

Gideon shrugged, like no matter. She'd be there soon enough. And for now, the quiet of not needing her, of not seeing her walking towards them case in hand was something to be savored.

And then, as if to test that, across the room, a phone rang on Morgan's desk. He plucked it up effortlessly, the receiver seeming almost small in his big hand. After greeting his unseen conversational partner, Morgan suddenly frowned. He turned slightly and motioned for Hotch and Gideon to approach.

Morgan held up a finger and then said into the receiver, "Thanks, L.C." And with that he hung up the phone and turned to the others, all who were watching him with curious looks.

"Problem?" Hotch asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.

"Maybe. That was my buddy down at the DC police department. He was telling me that he and his partner just got called down to the scene of a double murder. Guys got tore up real good."

"Ok," Hotch said, frowning a bit, his by the rules mind trying to figure out what Morgan was going to say next and preparing the appropriate response.

"Location is 1523 Port Avenue," Morgan said then, making his point.

"That's where JJ lives," Reid squeaked out immediately, a tinge of panic in his voice. Hotch glanced around at the others and saw the same worry there, the same dark thoughts. The same ugly "what ifs".

"Explains why she's late," Gideon put in quickly, as if to somehow mentally stop the runaway train that had started up in all their minds.

Hotch nodded, following Gideon's lead, using the same authoritative and right to the point, down to business kind of tone. "Have they talked to her yet?"

"See, that's the strange thing. Her car is in the driveway, but she's not answering. Considering that the murder happened two houses down from her, they're considering breaking down the door."

"Call him back," Hotch replied, shaking his head in the negative. "Tell him not to. Tell him we're on our way." He turned slightly, inclining his head towards Prentiss and Morgan as if to say "you're coming with us." He didn't miss how Reid stepped back and away.

How Reid clearly was too afraid to go along for fear of what he'd see.

Oh yeah, that was going to have to be dealt with very soon.


	4. Morgan

IV. MORGAN

He felt the vibration push through his body and echo in his joints like a gunshot. His eyes were on the road as the vehicle he was traveling in raced down it, but his mind was a million miles away.

Perhaps not quite a million. Perhaps just back in Georgia.

Those two days were still so crystal clear in his mind. Realizing that Hotch had sent his two junior agents right into a madman's hands. Racing like hell to get there. Finding JJ disheveled and slightly injured in the barn. Discovering the drag marks in the field.

Watching Reid be tortured.

The kid was like a little brother to him, someone who still reeked of innocence. Someone who despite his vast intelligence, still hadn't quite gotten the memo about what a horrible place the world really was.

And for that, Derek Morgan was grateful.

Or at least he had been until Tobias had slashed his way into all of their lives.

"Derek?" Emily Prentiss said from his side. She felt his hand slide over his shoulder and squeeze down. "She'll be okay."

Morgan turned slightly and nodded. "I know that."

JJ was like a sister to him. Not a baby sibling like Reid, more like one just a few years younger. And because she was older and usually more responsible, he tended to hold her to a higher standard. He tended to expect her to pull it together faster.

But even he knew that that wasn't fair at all.

"Okay," Hotch started, turning in his seat. Positioned next to him in the shotgun position was Jason Gideon. "When we get there, Gideon and I will go talk to the detective in charge, find out what happened. You two go to JJ's house and try to get inside."

"Any way you have to," Gideon said solemnly.

Morgan nodded and turned back to stare out the window. The trees around the area were getting denser, which meant that they were approaching JJ's neighborhood. He'd been over here a few times, usually for get-together kind of parties. JJ was the queen of those. She loved to throw a Christmas one every year.

And damn if that party didn't love to rock.

He smiled a bit, remembering the one from just about two months earlier. How there'd been enough hooch in the eggnog to get a giant drunk on one drink. How he'd nearly lost it watching a slightly drunk JJ try to teach a completely plastered Reid how to box-step.

How seeing Reid just about falling down drunk had given him punchlines for a year.

But Tobias had taken that away, too. And just like that, the smile faded from Morgan's face.

"We're here," Hotch said suddenly, breaking Morgan from his thoughts. The group immediately jumped out of the car. The scene was crowded with on-lookers and cop cars. In the middle of it was a coroner's van.

"This way," Morgan indicated to Prentiss, pointing towards JJ's townhouse. Prentiss hadn't made it to the party, had been too new at the time to feel comfortable accepting the invitation. Of course she'd said she'd had previous plans, but Morgan had known the truth. They all had. And then because at that time she'd been too new to them as well, they'd just shrugged and let her get away with it.

But she was family now.

This was a family. And JJ was like a sister.

No, she was a sister. Just as Reid was a brother.

"Morgan," Gideon called out. Morgan turned to face his mentor. "Any way you have to," he reiterated.

Morgan nodded and then he and Prentiss turned and made their away from the row of police cars, up towards the townhouse that belonged to JJ.

When they got to the front door, painted bright red just to add a splash of color, they saw a man in jeans and an overcoat waiting there. A gun on his hip showed he was on the job. When he saw Morgan, he lit up, not exactly smiling ear to ear, but welcoming his friend just the same.

"Derek, my man."

"Hey, L.C," Morgan replied, taking the cop's hand. He turned towards Prentiss. "Agent Emily Prentiss, Detective Lance Crow of the DC Poloce Department. We went through the academy together."

"You ended up a cop," Emily noted needlessly,

Crow nodded. "FBI wasn't my style."

"Not enough tackling," Morgan shrugged as he took a step closer to JJ's front door.

"Haven't noticed that stopping you," Prentiss countered. Morgan turned and regarded her with a bit of bemusement before turning back towards the door.

"How long you been knocking?"

"Knocking and ringing the doorbell," Crow corrected. "Good forty minutes on and off."

"Yeah, and we've been calling her cell since you let me know twenty minutes ago," Morgan frowned. Then he leaned forward and pressed her face up against the long vertical window that allowed some view into the entry of the townhouse. Everything inside looked neat, in it's place, but that hardly reassured him.

Especially when he saw that the alarm panel was blinking green.

"She didn't arm her alarm last night," he said.

"Maybe she forgot," Crow offered, hand going to the butt of his gun. "I mean, the front door is locked. Not likely a bad guy storms the house and locks the door on his way out."

"No, not likely," Prentiss agreed. "But trust me, not unheard of. Adam Co-" She stopped halfway, deciding that Crow probably didn't need a listen in serial killer history. Then, shaking her head, she tried to go for the positive. "Wait, Morgan, maybe we're overreacting. Maybe she spent the night somewhere else. With someone else."

"Uh uh," Morgan said with a shake of his head. "Even if there was a guy, she'd had driven there, not let herself get picked up. You know her, when a case comes in, she's always the first one into the office. No way she'd risk not having wheels nearby if Gideon or Hotch called her."

"Okay, so what about someone on this street?" Prentiss tried again, the creased look on her face indicating that she no longer believed any of her own explanations.

"Don't think so. She went out on a date with a guy a few houses down, but I don't think it went well. She was pretty pissed off about it after it happened. I Think his name was Gibson something or other…"

"Gibson Barrett?" Crow put in suddenly, looking quite worried and even alarmed.

"Yeah, why?" Morgan asked, glancing at Prentiss, who also seemed concerned.

Crow turned and pointed down the street, towards the crimescene. Both Prentiss and Morgan could see Hotch and Gideon huddled up with the detectives in charge. "One of the dead guys over there, Gibson Barrett. Guy got ripped apart. The other vic – Jim Murdock – looks like he was just in the wrong place in the wrong time. He went down to see what all the noise was about and got butchered for his trouble."

"Morgan," Prentiss started.

She needn't have bothered. Morgan turned away from and Crow and putting his weight behind it, slammed his foot into the thick wood of the front door. It held for half a second and then cracked and slid inwards, allowing the trio entrance.

Immediately, all three pulled out their guns, each shouting "clear" as they surged into each room. Morgan tore up the stairs, saw that everything appeared to be in its place and then called out, "JJ?"

No response. He continued down the hall, his fingers tensing around his gun.

It'd been a long couple of months for all of them. Elle getting shot. Elle leaving. JJ getting nearly mauled by dogs. Reid being kidnapped. Reid cracking around them.

He didn't think the team could take anymore.

He knew he couldn't.

Moving to the end of the hallway, he stepped close to the closed bedroom door that was JJ's. He'd only been in it once, when she'd shown him the grand tour of the place during one of her parties.

"JJ?"

Again, no response.

Licking his lips, he reached out with his hand and pushed the door open. The room was bathed in sunlight and immediately he saw her lying there.

Blankets over her, earphones on, not moving. He could hear the sound of insanely loud rock music emerging from the white iPod earbuds.

Still, he called out: "JJ?"

She didn't stir. Behind him, he felt the presence of Prentiss and Crow. He turned to them, met the fear in their eyes with his own and then turned back to JJ and started towards her.

"JJ?" he said, his tongue suddenly very thick. He put his hand out and touched the blankets that were atop her. Then he shook them. "JJ?"

For a moment, nothing happened. And then slowly, her eyes opened. Blue, a bit foggy and more than a little confused. She blinked and reaching up, removed her earphones.

"Derek?"

"Oh, thank God," Prentiss breathed, re-holstering her gun.

"JJ, we've been calling you for the last hour and these guys have been hammering on the door, why the hell didn't you answer?" Morgan snapped, suddenly quite angry. He knew that his anger was more frustrated relief than actual fury, but that hardly helped.

"I…I guess I didn't hear," JJ replied, her confusion mounting. She turned towards her clock, saw that it was after ten. She was definitely late, but still, that was hardly reason for panic. Not this kind of panic anyway. "What's going on, why are you…why are you guys in my bedroom?" She placed the iPod on the nightstand, allowing everyone to see that the battery had been almost completely drained. It'd been on all night.

And then she looked down, suddenly seeming quite sheepish and embarrassed.

But instead of answering, Morgan turned to the nightstand and plucked up the bottle of sleeping pills. "How many of these did you take?'

"Two," JJ shot back, suddenly getting angry. "Just two." Then, just like that, she backed down. "Look, let me get dressed and I'll be out in a second, okay?"

For a moment, Morgan looked like he was going to refuse so Prentiss reached out and touched his arm. "Come on, Derek."

He met JJ's eyes and then turned and exited the room with Prentiss and Crow. "I'll, uh, wait for you guys downstairs," Crow offered.

"Thanks," Morgan said.

As Crow turned and headed down the stairs, Prentiss glanced back towards JJ's bedroom. "You think she took too many?"

"Don't know," Morgan replied, starting to calm down, starting to unwind. "No, probably not. Just enough to sleep for ten hours and with that damn music blasting in her ears…"

"She didn't hear a thing."

"Right."

"So…why are you so angry, then?" Prentiss asked, meeting his eyes.

Morgan looked down for a second. Then, with a sigh, "Because we missed it."

"It?" Prentiss queried, knowing damn well what he was talking about.

"I mean, we missed the reason she needed to take sleeping pills. And we seem to be missing it for everyone. Elle, Reid, JJ."

"We can only help them as much as they let us," Prentiss insisted.

"That's not true and you know it. We help them as much as we feel right doing. Hotch asks them if they're okay, Gideon offers riddles…but we don't actually help them. We don't actually ever force them to face their issues. And you know why that is, Em?"

"No," Prentiss replied quietly.

"Because if we do, then we open ourselves up for someone to ask us about our problems," Morgan told her. "And damn if we don't all like our secrets."

"Yes, we do," JJ said, exiting her bedroom and stepping out into the hallway. "Now if we're done with that, would someone like to tell me what the hell is going on?"

Noticing that Morgan looked like he was about to flare again, Prentiss stepped forward and addressed JJ, "There was a murder a couple houses down from you. Gibson Barrett."

"Barrett? Really?" JJ blinked. Her expression was oddly unreadable.

"Yeah," Morgan nodded. "Gideon and Hotch are over there finding out the details."

"Okay," JJ said. "Then let's join them." And with that, she turned and walked away from Morgan and Prentiss, her body language quite pointed in saying that discussion was over.

Morgan's look said otherwise.


	5. Gideon

Jason Gideon was far from a stupid man. In fact it'd been said more time than he cared to recall that he was a brilliant individual. He'd been told that he had a remarkable mind, one capable of swinging between the psyches of a normal man and a deranged one within moments. In his time, he'd always responded calmly to such praise. "Thank you, sir." And then a smile to top it off.

Because these people couldn't possibly understand. They couldn't possibly know that moving between minds wasn't about swinging, it wasn't about masterfully maneuvering or careful study.

It was all about surrendering yourself to the darkness and praying like hell that the harness you'd strapped on before you jumped over the cliff held up.

A time or two, his had not.

A time or two, he'd fallen way too fast and much too far.

More than a time or two, he'd wondered just what the hell he was doing in this line of work. Now, gazing down at the crimescene just down the street from his agent's house, he again wondered why he hadn't chosen retirement after the whole Bale fiasco. No one would have blamed him.

"Guy splattered on the inside of the car is Gibson Barrett. Man cut up on the outside is Jim Murdock. Barrett was shredded. Murdock just took a knife to the chest for his troubles," the detective in charge, Andrew Burke, informed he and Hotch.

He turned and watched as Hotch walked around the Porsche, his keen ex-prosecutors eye taking in every detail. Hotch was in many ways his partner. The whole team seemed to have one. Morgan and Prentiss, JJ and Reid. He and Hotch. Always paired up, usually able to understand each other with very few words.

With he and Hotch it was more. They were like parents to this group. Mom and dad, alternating depending on the day. And because of that, they had to be able to read their people like a mother and a father would read their kids.

But these weren't kids. They were adults whose demons were catching up.

"Any idea how Barrett got into the car?" Hotch finally asked.

"Yup, he broke his own window to get in. That's what triggered the alarm. Not sure where he thought he was going though; he didn't have keys on him, " Burke answered.

"Didn't matter," Gideon shrugged. "He was just trying to get away. One part of his mind said lock yourself inside, the other part didn't connect the dots that by breaking the window he'd be allowing his killer a way to follow him."

"Also," Hotch suggested, "He probably set off the alarm in hopes that he'd either scare away his killer or bring enough help to do so."

"Well he brought help," Burke said dryly, glancing over at the corpse of Jim Murdock.

"Hotch," Gideon said suddenly, turning just to the side. The sun was bright this morning and it fairly beamed off the hair of Jennifer Jareau as she approached with Morgan, Prentiss and Lance Crow right on her heels. She looked exhausted to him and perhaps even a bit pissed off.

Hotch breathed out a sigh of relief and then went to meet her. "Are you alright?"

"Fine. I overslept. I'm sorry," she replied, a tight unusual clip to her words. That was a tone she usually reserved for reporters. Gideon felt his eyebrow lift just a bit. She was off. Unlike the others on the team, all profilers who by their very nature knew how to disguise and hide their demons, JJ tended to be an open book when she so chose to be. Around her friends, around the safety that they offered, she tended to wear everything on the surface. Frustration, fear, joy, happiness. And in this case, irritation and embarrassment. But there was more, something deep behind those big blue eyes.

Something that was screaming out, "Help me, help me, I'm falling."

"Okay," Hotch finally nodded, but Gideon didn't miss his partner's eyes flicker over to Morgan, as if seeking confirmation. And he didn't miss the fact that Morgan's eyes were unable to provide that confirmation. Damn. Damn. Damn.

How could they be so stupid to let this get so out of hand?

"Murdock's over there. Gibson Barrett is in the car," Hotch told the others.

JJ titled her head just a bit, glanced inwards and then immediately look away, revulsion creasing her face. And she looked suddenly quite sick, Gideon thought. Like she was about to throw up.

But she wouldn't. He knew that. They all knew that. Because she was better controlled than that. You didn't do this job, you couldn't become good at this job, if you weren't a master of control.

Even if it was all an illusion.

"Is this our case?" Morgan asked quietly, leaning in.

"No, probably not," Hotch answered immediately. "But JJ, they will want to talk to you."

"Of course, " she nodded, still not looking near the car.

"If you like, I'll go with," Hotch offered.

Before she could respond, Gideon quickly put in, "No, I will." He turned towards JJ, saw her open her mouth to protest. The moment their eyes met, she stopped. She was a smart girl, a better read of people than anyone gave her credit for. She knew an order when she saw it. Even when the order wasn't spoken aloud.

"Okay," she said softly, her voice barely audible. And there it was, the embarrassment again.

Gideon nodded then, the matter settled.

Everything else was up in the air.

* * *

The room they were sitting in was comfortable. After all, this wasn't meant to be an interrogation. JJ wasn't a person of interest, she wasn't even really a witness. All she was, was someone who'd had a brief relationship with the dead.

Problem was, talking about that relationship meant that she had to unseal a part of her personal life. And worse, she had to do so in front of her supervisor. A man who was like a father figure to her.

"Okay," Andrew Burke started. "We want to make this real quick and easy for you, Agent Jareau. All we want to know is who Gibson Barrett was and why someone would want to kill him."

Only because he knew her so well by now did he see her lip quirk just a bit as the first answer that ripped her through her mind tried to get out through her lips. But again, she was far too controlled for that. And so instead, quite evenly, painfully devoid of any inflection that might betray her emotions, she said, "I only went out with him once. It wasn't a great date. Nothing really happened."

"If you don't mind me asking," Burke drawled. "Why didn't anything happen?"

And again, her lip quirked. Only this time more noticeably. Gideon watched as her shoulders tightened, and her back straightened. Like she was facing the press. Like she was going into battle.

Poor Burke, he mused. The poor kid stood no chance.

And yet, JJ was off. He could see that, too. The slight drowsiness behind her eyes. Her hands which couldn't quite stay still and the irritation which she couldn't completely erase from her face.

She was too damn good to be showing any of those things.

"I do mind," JJ replied. "But for the sake of the investigation, I'll answer the question. Gibson wasn't my type. We didn't have a great dinner and by the time we got back to my place, we decided…" she stopped briefly, parsing her words and then…"mutually that we should end the night."

Burke's look was dubious so like a fool, he pushed on. "He had your business card on refrigerator. Looks like it had your personal cell number on it."

And this time JJ actually flinched just a bit, her face contorting for maybe a second or so, before she schooled her features. It was a curious reaction, one that Gideon filed away for later. Because he was sure that it meant something. "I probably gave it to him when we first met. I'm not sure why he kept it."

"What about over dinner. Did he say anything to you that now when you think back on, you think might have gotten him into trouble."

Gideon saw the smile form on her lips. It looked for a second like it was going to explode across her face, into a full grin, but then it stopped and she simply said, "No. On a personal level I found him to be someone I didn't really care to spend time with. Beyond that, I don't know."

And somehow, Gideon knew she was lying. He just wasn't sure what about yet.

"Okay," Burke nodded. "I think we're done here. Thank you, Agent Jareau. If we have any more questions, we'll let you know."

Gideon watched for a look of relief to cross her face, half-expected it. But then, he realized, he was underestimating her. Even in her raw state, she was more controlled than that.

She was simply stronger than that.

He wondered if that was to her detriment.

* * *

They'd driven back to Quantico in silence. She'd been driving her big black SUV and for a few moments, he'd been watching her, waiting for her to speak.

All she'd managed was, "I hear the Skins might trade for a good pick this year."

And so he'd talked football with her. Because that was all the in she was willing to give. Her face, her twitching jaw, however, they both told him that her mind was a million miles away.

Probably focused on a man she clearly could barely stand.

Because he'd died near her. Because he'd been murdered while she'd been trying to escape her own nightmares. And she probably blamed herself.

Scratch that, he knew that she blamed herself.

Because he knew that he would have. Even if it didn't make a lick of sense.

"You feeling okay?" he finally asked, glancing towards her. He saw her fingers tighten on the wheel. It was the question she'd been hoping like hell he wouldn't ask.

"Fine," she said with a forced smile. "Could use some coffee," she tagged on.

"Okay," he replied, looking back out the window. He frowned a bit, annoyed that he wasn't quite sure how to speak to her.

But then, he reminded himself, he hadn't really been able to find a way to directly speak to Reid either. And he was a hell of a lot closer to Reid than he was to JJ.

Because she was good at what she did.

Only giving away as much as she wanted given away to who she wanted it given away to. Usually she reserved that for the enemy, for the evil.

But now those who were both family and friends were a danger to her, a threat to expose her demons.

And so they drove in silence.

* * *

"Jason," Hotch called out, as they entered the bullpen together at just after noon.

"It went fine," Gideon said quickly, getting a look of thanks from JJ, who surely didn't want to talk about it anymore.

"I know. Look, they've asked us to join the case."

"What?" JJ exclaimed, just a small hint of hysteria in her tone. Then she calmed herself. "Why? What does this have to do with us?"

"Barrett wasn't the first," Reid commented, coming towards them. Gideon watched a look pass between Reid and JJ. Watched both look away from each other. They tried to make it casual, but he saw the flash of emotion between them.

Friendship or whatever the hell they had between them gone awry,

Guilt. Anger. Blame. Shame.

Just plain pain.

She hid it better. He wasn't too bad.

"What do you mean?" she asked, looking more at Hotch than Reid. To their side, the rest of the team had joined the group. Morgan had positioned himself rather protectively, like a big brother, next to JJ. Gideon almost smiled when he saw Morgan do a quick once-over of JJ, just to make sure one more time that really was okay.

At least physically.

"Barrett was the third murder of this kind. We have a serial killer in our own backyard," Hotch told her. "All the files are on your desk. How quick do you think you can get a briefing together?"

"Give me an hour," she replied, eyes shining, fully awake now.

And Gideon thought to himself, well isn't that interesting, she looks thankful.

Thankful for the distraction.

Kind of like strapping on a harness and jumping into the darkness.

He just hoped she wouldn't fall too far, too fast.


	6. Prentiss

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I wanted to say a quick thank you to all who have read and provided feedback. Hope you continue to enjoy reading this as much I am writing it

-Shawn

* * *

Emily Prentiss was skilled at many an unusual thing. Chess, checkers, she could even play a mean game of Chutes and Ladders. A self professed dork, she sometimes wondered if maybe she could go head to head with Reid in a game of Name The Star Trek Episode. She was even willing to toss in a bonus round of "what's the Doctor McCoy quote".

As a child, she'd collected just about everything that a child could, much to her parents annoyance and obvious displeasure. Especially her mother's. Ambassador Prentiss, who was not a shy woman when it came to her stubbornly held opinions, had always believed that a young lady should study poetry and logic, not the theory of how to make a quarter levitate.

But, Emily mused, as the conference room began to fill up with her weary teammates, she'd hardly ever been the perfect little lady. More apt to be found playing tackle football in the mud with her male friends than reading Robert Frost with her female acquaintances, she'd been a great disappointment to her mother for a very long time.

"Three victims," JJ said suddenly, dragging her back to the present. She glanced over at the blonde woman and couldn't help herself from frowning just a bit. She liked JJ, liked her a lot. Unlike the males in the group, the women of the BAU had been immediately accepting and welcoming of her. Especially JJ, who seemed to always have a bright smile on her face.

Now however, now she looked like hell. She'd thrown on a layer of makeup, but it did little to hide the exhaustion in her eyes or the tension that was making her stand far straighter than normal. In short, she was on edge, coasting on the fumes of her stubbornness and pride.

But then, she was hardly the only one trying to pull off that trick.

Emily glanced over at Reid, the other member of the team who as of late seemed like he wasn't quite screwed on straight.

He was snappy, jumpy and impatient. Often irritated, frequently annoyed.

She knew all this because she had been the brunt of much of it.

Reid was right in a way. She was new to the team. She hadn't known him very long. But he was also wrong. She had known what she'd been talking about.

As a child, as the only child of career politicians, she'd spent a great deal of her youth watching people, listening to people and then learning them. Body language, tone, eyes. Everything came together.

A man could lie easily and effortlessly with his voice, but if his hands twitched, if they told, then she'd known.

As for Reid, well everything about him was a tell.

And for a boy from Vegas, that was saying something.

"Actually four if you add in Murdock," Hotch corrected. Emily didn't miss the furious flush that for half a second reddened JJ's cheeks. Like, "How could I have missed that?" Her actual response, however, was a quick sharp nod.

"Right. Four. The first victim was Alvarez DiSparto. 43. He was a retail manager who was married with eight children." She pointed to the screen and a picture of a Latino man with a large jolly smile came up on the LCD.

"Ouch," Morgan whispered, shaking his head, undoubtedly thinking about the loss of his own father at far too young of an age. Emily had long ago realized that Derek Morgan was a man whose past constantly informed his here and now. Some people could separate the past from the present, break all of the emotions apart and let each situation be its own. Not Derek. No, Derek felt frequently, deeply and often intimately the scars of his youth.

"Victim number two was Thomas Bell. 31. Single with one child. He was working for the city until last month when he was laid off because he failed to show for work after being arrested for not paying almost eight thousand dollars in back child support." The picture on the screen showed a young man who looked far too thin and just a little bit like a weasel.

"Nice guy," Emily muttered, before quickly turning away from the disapproving look that she knew that Hotch would be throwing her way. He was the one member of the group that she still hadn't cracked, still hadn't found a way to convince that she was just one of the team. Some days, hell, most days she wondered if she ever would.

"And finally, " JJ finished, her voice growing suddenly very cold and controlled, "Last nights' victim, Gibson Barrett." The photo of Barrett showed a very handsome man with an easy smile that could charm a snake out of its basket. "29. Single with no children. He was a junior associate over at McCovey, Blanton and Corgee, a criminal defense law firm located downtown."

There was a warning edge in her tone, something that said, "there are the facts, okay? So don't ask me to more than them."

And for now, Emily knew that none of them really would. Because that wasn't this team's way and Derek was right, they all rather liked their secrets.

But that wasn't good enough, Emily thought with a frown. This whole bit where everyone stuck their head in the sand and pretended not to notice that their two youngest agents were struggling badly, only just barely treading water, well it sure wasn't doing anyone any good. Not JJ. Not Reid.

"All three were bludgeoned with what appears to be a hammer of some kind. The first two victims died from this and were then eviscerated and slashed at with a hunting knife upwards of two hundred times a piece," JJ informed them, clicking a button on her remote. Bloody crimescene photos filled the TV, showing their horrific way in which the Alvarez and Bell had died.

"A bit of overkill," Morgan noted.

"Actually more of a frenzy than overkill," Reid amended. "He probably couldn't help himself. It became something of an obsession, a need of some kind to keep slashing at them. He couldn't stop."

"What about Barrett?" Hotch asked, flipping through his casefile. Emily glanced down at her own, marveling at the neatness, the order and the precise execution with which it had been put together with. JJ had had little over an hour to compile iboth a Powerpoint presentation and folders for each team member and as usual, she'd come through with flying colors.

But then, JJ hid things better than most. Whether behind razor sharp efficiency or a smile that could put a thousand watt spotlight to shame, she always seemed to manage to control perception.

It was her job.

Probably also her curse.

Pride was a terrible thing, especially when it forced you to close off in fear of letting people down. Especially when those people were family.

"Barrett was bludgeoned as well, but apparently survived long enough to make it to his car. The Unsub followed him there and well…"

"We saw what he did," Emily murmured, more to herself than the others. Still, they heard and she found herself just a little bit pleased that they all nodded their acceptance of this truth.

"Did Murdock die the same way?" Gideon asked, toothpick between his teeth. It was the first thing he'd said since the meeting had begun, but it would be a lie to say that Emily had forgotten that he was even there. No, Jason Gideon was the kind of man that no one, be it friend or foe, ever forgot.

During her first days with the BAU, she'd often watched him. Watched him as he leaned against the wall in the back of the room, listening to everything and turning it around in the awesome mind of his until it made the kind of sense that only he could understand. In theory it was a curious thing, but in an actual practice, well it was amazing.

Simply put, Jason Gideon was brilliant and being around him always felt like something of an awesome privilege.

"No," JJ replied, shaking her head, her messy ponytail swinging from side to side. The men probably hadn't noticed that JJ wasn't looking as sharp as usual, but Emily had. It was a girl thing. It was a thing that she wasn't used to noticing about JJ. " He was stabbed once in the chest. We won't know cause of death until the coroner does an autopsy."

"Okay," Hotch said. "We need victimology."

"I'll get started on that," Emily offered, idly wondering if she looked a little bit like an overeager puppy as she scrambled to volunteer her services.

"No," Hotch answered, shaking his head. Emily felt her heart sink. It seemed no matter how hard she tried…

"Sir?" she finally managed.

"I want you and Morgan to go back through Barrett's house. Figure out how the Unsub got in. Maybe it's best if you take JJ-"

And then he stopped. Abruptly and looking a bit troubled. Like he wasn't sure that this was a bridge he wanted to cross. Emily turned just enough to see JJ's expression. It was a warning one, but also a pleading one. She seemed to be begging Hotch not to go there.

But of course, they all knew that he had to. And so carefully, in a tone that Emily found herself absurdly envious of, he continued, "JJ, have you ever been inside in Barrett's house?"

She sighed, looked annoyed, but then like the finely tuned and trained FBI agent that she was, she admitted, "Yes." Cold. Controlled. And somehow oddly and disconcertingly vulnerable.

"Could you go back there with Morgan and Prentiss? See if maybe you can point out anything that might be out of place?" Hotch asked her, his tone soft, his query more of a request than an order. The amount of respect he had for JJ was obvious to everyone and again, Emily felt a brief surge of envy.

"Of course," JJ replied and for a moment, Emily was surprised. She wasn't really sure what she had been expecting, but resigned acceptance hadn't been it. But then, Emily rationalized, perhaps she should have because the respect between JJ and Hotch certainly went both ways.

And as if to prove it, unnecessarily Hotch said," Thank you."

Then, using a force that was uniquely his, Gideon chimed in with "I'll check in with the local police, let them know we're taking the case and see if they have any suspects."

"Good," Hotch responded. "Reid, you and I will get cracking on victimology. There has to be something tying these men together."

Reid nodded his acceptance of this and then turned his attention to the casefile. But before he did, before he could look away, hiding his face and its weary hollowed out features from the others, Emily caught him stealing a glance over at JJ. She couldn't quite read his expression, but there was something there.

Something…very…odd?

Was…was Reid worried about JJ? It seemed just a little bit preposterous. Reid had a thousand of his own problems, was lost within his own haze, a fog which she'd tried to penetrate with limited and often unsettling results.

And yet his look as he briefly gazed over at JJ, well it seem troubled. But then, Emily reminded herself, there was something between these two. Or at least there had been. Deeper than co-workers, more intense than just friends, but not quite lovers. At least not yet.

And considering what was now between them – Georgia, something he'd claimed he'd never blamed her for, something she insisted she was at fault for – it was hard to see how they could ever find a way back to place they'd been before Tobias had come into their lives.

But that was a problem for another day. And since Reid had looked away and was now pretending to find his thoroughly read and re-read casefile interesting, it was time for her to move on as well.

Cracking her back as she stood, she turned and followed a silent JJ and Morgan out of the room.

* * *

The inside of Barrett's townhouse was no surprise. The man had been well off, but had thought himself something of a modern day Casanova. As such, little in the house looked like what a grown man would own, but rather what someone who was looking to seduce and bed as many women as he could in as short a time as he could would have.

Even Morgan looked just a little bit appalled.

When they entered the place, Emily saw JJ tense up. She truly wanted to be anywhere, but here.

"JJ?" Morgan asked, stepping close to her. But before he could get to her, JJ waved him away. Not even an "I'm fine." Just an impatient flip of her hand. More like "knock it off, go away."

"Police report says he was attacked in the kitchen," Emily said, turning in a circle. Her eyes flickered towards JJ, as if to ask her which way, but the stony expression on the blonde's face convinced her not to. "So…"

"Over there," Morgan pointed. Emily followed him towards the kitchen, not missing the fact that JJ stayed back near the front door, not seeming to want to move past the entry. Almost like she was hoping that she could turn and walk back through the door. Pretend nothing had happened.

"Morgan, they only went out once, right?" Emily asked as they entered the kitchen. She intentionally kept her voice low, not wanting JJ to hear.

"So she told me," he shrugged, his eyes darting around the overly stylish room.

"Then why does she seem so upset about being here?"

"She's probably taking it personally, thinks she should have stopped it."

And while that seemed right to Emily, it also upset her more than she cared to admit. JJ was already struggling mightily under the guilt of the Reid situation, she hardly needed another helping.

"You ready?" Morgan asked.

She nodded.

"Okay, so it looks like he was in here cooking dinner." He turned and pointed towards a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup.

"They don't call that cooking, Derek," Emily cracked.

"Says the woman who believes escargot is quality food."

"I never said that," she countered. "I simply said it's more edible than you'd think and with the right amount of garlic butter, even pretty…good."

"Uh huh. If you have to douse something with butter, that doesn't make it edible, just means the butter is pretty damn good."

Emily laughed, couldn't really deny it.

"Anyway," Morgan continued. "He was cooking. Heard a knock at the back door." He indicated over towards the door in the kitchen. It led out to the side of the house.

"He's a stud, probably fears almost no one so he opens the door."

Morgan nodded and yanked the door open. "Wide open and there stands our Unsub."

"Photos show that Barrett had a bruise on his cheek," Emily said. "So the Unsub punches him? That seems odd, doesn't it?"

"Not really. Barrett has a glass jaw. He probably went down immediately," JJ said from the doorway of the kitchen. Both Morgan and Emily turned towards her. Emily noticed immediately that while JJ had come to help, she still didn't seem all that keen on actually walking into the room where Barrett had been attacked.

"He was a big man," Morgan countered, not so much challenging her, but attempting to get her to expound on what she'd said.

"Yeah and in most fights, he'd probably win, but a hit to the jaw would knock him down. At least at first."

"Why?" Emily asked, because what JJ was saying seemed so strange.

"He told me that his jaw had been broken three times. Twice by men he's stolen women from – you know, he was a real prince of a guy – and once by a baseball. Apparently he wasn't much of a catcher."

There was undeniable bitterness there. And while Emily couldn't be certain, she guessed that it had to do with feeling guilt for a man she couldn't stand.

"Ok, so the Unsub punches Barrett. He goes down and before Barrett can adjust, our guy is on top of him, hits him on the head with the hammer, keeps hitting…" Morgan suggested.

"But Barrett's a fighter and so he manages to get loose and he runs outside. He sees his car," Emily continued, just about seeing the images play out in front of her.

"But he's hurt too badly and not thinking straight. He doesn't realize until he's inside the car that he doesn't have the keys," Morgan said, shaking his head.

"And then he's just dead," JJ finished for them. They both looked over at her, both a bit stunned by the anger in her tone. Both a bit shocked by the hollow coldness in her normally bright blue eyes.

"JJ," Emily started, taking half a step towards her.

"So now we know how," JJ interrupted, moving half a step back. If wasn't that she was afraid so much as that she seemed to be insisting on rejecting any form of comfort "Can we go?"

It was such an un-JJ like thing to say that for a moment, neither she nor Morgan could reply. Only stare back at their blonde friend in worry.

Finally Morgan replied, "Sure."

Then, as they watched, without another word, JJ turned on her heels and beat a hasty retreat.

And silently, to herself, Emily wondered if things had just gone from bad to worse.

TBC.


	7. Garcia

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: I went back and looked at chapter 1 and one of the things that I had intended in regards to Barrett seemed unclear there so I rewrote a few lines there to make what happened between he and JJ a little more...up in the air. Nothing all that violent per se, but I certainly want to make it clear that Barrett was a guy who JJ didn't have too many good feelings for. Shouldn't dramatically alter the path of the rest of the story.**

**Anyway, as always, thank you so much for the feedback. Enjoy the read.**

* * *

His name was James. Sweet, beautiful and sleek, he purred like a kitten when she touched him. Sometimes, if she ran her finger down him in just the right way, the tip of her nail lightly scratching him just so, well sometimes he'd whistle in appreciation.

Right now, however, James was having a very bad day. One of those kick the wall, punch the sofa, bite something until it bleeds kind of days.

And from where Penelope Garcia stood, it wasn't looking like it was going to get any better for her precious James.

He was perched precariously between pictures of her loves ones. A photo of her with her brothers. Another of her and JJ hugging tightly. One of her team, all of them looking a bit tipsy. And finally one of her with Derek. The last two had been snapped at JJ's annual Christmas party.

The one where JJ had gotten Reid to box-step.

God if that didn't seem like months ago.

She shook those thoughts off. James. Focus on Sweet James.

"Shh, my sweet," Garcia said as she approached James, her hands out to touch him, to comfort and calm him.

To her side, her desktop, the machine she liked to call many different names depending on how good and generous it was to her on any given day, was running detailed background searches on all of the victims of the new case the BAU team had been assigned to.

That, however, was of little concern to her at the moment.

James. Sweet James. He was all that mattered.

"Please," she begged him. "Please stop."

But he keep screeching out obscenities and making noises that well, well he shouldn't be making. Noises that frankly terrified her.

"No, no," she pleaded. "Don't do that, baby. I love you. I need you." She clasped her hands together, wringing them in desperation.

But James wasn't listening, wasn't hearing her. He just keep screaming, kept throwing the mother of all temper tantrums.

"Hey, Garcia! Are you alright in here? Hotch and I heard the sounds and-" From where he was standing in the doorway, Spencer Reid trailed off, his eyes taking in the scene in front of him. The just…bizarreness of it. Garcia looked over at him, a few unshed tears in her eyes. "Garcia?"

"He…he…"

The words wouldn't come.

Reid entered the room and approached her. "Garcia?" he asked again, his brow furrowed like he couldn't understand what the problem was.

"He…he…"

And James growled again, this time louder and more painfully, like nails on a chalkboard. Reid winced and Garcia felt a wave of guilt wash over her. The way he'd moved, well people didn't do that when they heard sounds like that. They covered their ears, but they didn't almost collapse. Their faces didn't grow white like that.

Still, Reid was here right now. For right now okay. Sure his eyes looked a little funny and his attention span seemed a little well, short, but he was a strange guy, so both of those things could be normal. Maybe.

But James. Sweet, sweet stalwart James. Right now he was the important one. He was the one who was dying. Painfully. Horribly…

James screeched again and then quite suddenly, went terribly quiet.

For a long moment there wasn't a sound in the room. And then Garcia let out a single strangled sob of grief and agony.

"Garcia?" Reid asked once more, no longer cringing, now just looking confused. "Was that thing making that noise…"

"Not a thing," she squeaked, hands fanning the air in front of her, like she was having trouble breathing.

"Was that your… laptop?" he continued, blinking several times. Try as he might, he just couldn't wrap his mind around was happening. And in the back of Garcia's mind, the part that wasn't hysterical, she thought that that was a bit odd, too.

"Yes," she choked out. "My James." She pointed to a placard on the wall, just above James's docking station. It, of course, read: SWEET JAMES. Reid read it, his eyes skittering very quickly away from the pictures and only settling on the placard for about half a second.

But then, for a guy who could read 20,000 words a minute, that was more enough time to have read the placard. And memorized it for life.

Reid couldn't help, but smile. "I'm sorry," he offered up. It sounded more like a question than a statement because he wasn't really sure if one was supposed to be sorry about a laptop keeling over.

She sniffled. "I know you are." She continued to stare at her baby, thinking about all they'd been through together. Thinking about that how horrible Fisher King had hijacked him, thinking about how in the aftermath of that, she and Sweet James had had a very intense conversation about using proper protection while trolling the net.

Thinking about how Hotch had finally permitted her to bring Sweet James back to work after she had shown him all the different security measures that had been installed and implemented. She'd joked that she'd just Trojanized him and Hotch, who wasn't half as humorless as everyone thought, had smirked and just walked away.

But now, now James was on his deathbed. Oh, it was almost too much to bare. Too much unfairness and injustice in the world.

"Should we…bury it?" Reid asked suddenly, not really knowing what the protocol for this situation would be.

Garcia smiled sadly over at him. He was a geek, yes, but he'd never been a computer type. In fact, if allowed, he'd have preferred to do everything by old fashioned pen and paper. The fact that the government apparently employed blind as a bat ninety year olds to vet the after action reports had forced him into having a laptop of his own. Which he used as infrequently as he could get away with.

"No," she finally said, shaking her head solemnly. "He's sick. Very sick, but not dead." And then she reached forward and stroked him gently. "Shh, baby, momma's here. Momma's gonna take good care of you. Just you wait and see. Momma will make you all better."

Reid cleared his throat. "Why don't I, uh…leave you alone with-"

"No! Don't leave."

Reid's eyebrow again went up. Garcia winced inwardly. That had been too much. Taking a breath, she toned it down. Calmed it down.

"Look, for now James needs his rest. He has intensive open heart surgery scheduled for later this afternoon. In the meanwhile, I could use a distraction so why don't you stay and talk to me, okay?"

"I should really get back to Hotch," came the hesitant reply. Reid took a step backwards, but didn't quite exit. Garcia knew as well as he did that Reid had no real desire to go back into the room with Hotch.

Who with every day, every moment, was getting closer to the truth. Closer to figuring out that something was very wrong with his youngest agent. Something so wrong in fact that Reid wasn't going to be able to get through it on his own. Hotch was figuring it out.

They all were.

"You can stay for a few minutes," Garcia replied as lightly as she could. She was intentionally trying to set him at ease, make him think she wasn't going to do what she had every intention of doing. Grilling him of course. "After all," she continued, with a slight, but dramatic pout. "I am an over-emotional mother, I shouldn't be left alone right now."

And again, obviously quite in spite of how he was feeling and what he suspected she was up to, Reid laughed. He crossed over to the swivel chair against the wall - the one that probably had an imprint of JJ's ass permanently stamped onto it for all the time she spent in here - and sat down. He moved towards Garcia, rolling the chair a bit.

"What did you want to talk about?" he asked quietly. There was an undercurrent of dread there, but even that seemed muted. Again, Garcia was hit the unsettling feeling that something was off about him.

She pretended to think for a moment and then finally said, "Been seeing anyone?" She knew it was a lame open but she also knew it would get a reaction from him and that was a start because lately, Reid had been falling further and further into himself.

Bottling things up like the damn Coca-Cola Company.

"No," he replied, eyebrow lifted. Not quite the reaction she'd been hoping for, more curiosity than anger. Still something. "Wouldn't you know if I was?"

"Well you and JJ-"

"Aren't a couple and have never been a couple," Reid interrupted a flash of something like anger in his tone. There was more though. Spencer Reid typically wasn't a man who spoke in absolutes. He stammered, he hedged; he left doors open for possibilities. And he was rarely straight to the point. That he'd been so cold, hard and direct, well it said something. She just wasn't quite sure what yet.

For a long moment, Garcia didn't have an answer for that. And then she said, very softly, "Reid, I wasn't-"

"You were," he nodded quickly, deliberately. "But we've never even-" he stopped, seemed thoughtful for a moment. And as he was, it occurred to Garcia that he was telling her more than he usually did. He was saying more, he was letting more in and out about his feelings for JJ.

And that was odd.

And yet somehow, it made sense.

She knew - just as everyone else did - that Reid and JJ seemed to be caught in the middle of a spell of friendship interruptus, but Reid's sudden flash of anger in regards to her seemed more than that, more than just two people who couldn't find a way to talk to each other about the mutual, but separate hell they'd been through.

"We've never even had a moment," Reid finally finished, practically spitting out each word. "She saves those for…" He stopped again, his eyes settling on the main computer in the room, the one which was showing a picture of the third victim. "Guys like Gibson Barrett."

Then, suddenly, eyes wide with shock at his decidedly un-Reid like anger and behavior, Garcia got what was going on. And it made her sick.

JJ was falling apart because of the stress, guilt and strain she'd been under since Georgia. What had happened to Barrett had just been too much and now, the cracks were forming in her, each one deeper and longer than the one before it.

It wouldn't take much more pressure to make her fall apart completely.

Everyone could see. Everyone.

Including Reid.

But most importantly, including Hotch and Gideon. Who had already been close to figuring things out. So close. Closer now.

Because in order to help JJ out, in order to save their so obviously troubled friend who was now becoming increasingly incapable of keeping everything pulled together, everyone was going to have to take a step backwards so that they could see the big picture.

A picture which was coming more and more into alarming focus with each passing second.

A grim picture which included Reid.

Which meant that JJ's problems had turned the spotlight on Reid. And that, and probably not Georgia, was why he was angry at and with her.

Because it was a simple line that connected the two youngest agents. One that showed the trauma of what they'd been through and how both were dealing with it in a way that was more self-destructive than helpful.

And damned if the seven members of the BAU didn't like their secrets, but even secrets couldn't last forever.

Not in a family.

And above all else, this was a family.

"Okay," Garcia finally soothed. "Let's try this again. When's the last time you and JJ talked? And I don't mean as in sharing case info."

Reid shrugged. "Yesterday." The coldness was still there. Garcia tried to think back to when she'd seen him right after the case briefing earlier that same day. He'd been walking out by himself, just seconds after JJ had exited with Morgan and Prentiss. He'd mumbled something to Hotch about needing to use the bathroom.

She remembered that JJ had still been in the hallway. Just standing there. Taking a second by herself while Prentiss had been waiting for her, about ten feet away. The two older agents had been trying to pretend to talk to each other, but they'd absolutely been watching JJ.

And by the way JJ had been staring at the floor, she'd known it.

When JJ had finally looked up, Garcia could recall seeing a smile pass between JJ and Reid, who at that point had been just inches apart. It hadn't been as friendly or cheery as usual, but still one that had seemed to say – at least from Reid's POV, "It's okay. You're okay. We're okay."

So what the hell had happened since then to make him so much more pissed off at her? What could she possibly have done to him while she was out of the office?

Idly, because her mind was never one to outright reject the goofy, she wondered if Reid had zipped himself up into his pants during his trip to the bathroom and that was why he was in such a cranky mood.

No, her mind shook it off. Unless JJ was the one pulling the zipper – an amusing, but unlikely thought – Reid still wouldn't have reason to be pissed at her. Truly a mystery then. Penelope Garcia loved mysteries.

Usually.

This one was a bit too personal to love.

This one was a bit too important to fuck up.

"What'd you talk about?" Garcia prompted.

Reid bristled a bit. "Not that it's any of your business…" Immediately Garcia was reminded of how JJ had spoken to her back at Hankel's place. When she'd demanded to see the video of Tobias murdering the family that Reid had chosen. So cold and disconnected. So obviously terrified beyond words. Reid sounded like that now. "But, she borrowed a dollar from me so that she could buy herself a soda," he finished off.

"JJ bought a soda?" Garcia blinked, knowing that she was again losing focus, but momentarily allowing her curiosity to get the best of her. JJ was a beer, wine, coffee, water and ice tea with too much lemon in it kind of girl. On occasion lemonade, but rarely if ever soda.

"I think it was a diet one," he replied, glancing down at his nails. Almost absently, he flicked his middle finger against his thumb.

"I didn't think she ever drank soda. Any kind of soda."

And again Reid shrugged because right now he was still too angry at her to really concentrate on the red flag that had just been thrown up over the field of play. "Maybe she felt like doing something different." And then, lower – much lower- "We're all entitled to that every now and again."

"Right," Garcia murmured. She hadn't missed the red flag, but she wasn't quite sure what to make of it so she pushed on. "So, that was it? Just, 'can I borrow a dollar'?"

He nodded.

"Reid," she said, moving close to him, not missing how one of his feet, which had previously been wound around the base of the chair, dropped to the ground and flattened out, as if to give himself a strong push backwards if it became necessary to get away quickly. "Don't you get it? You've both changed. And not for the better."

"No," he replied, shaking his head. "I'm fine." Now, unlike how he'd been in the hallway, he was protecting only himself. Hanging JJ out to dry. Another red flag if ever there was one.

And suddenly, just like that, Penelope Garcia was just done with it. Done with feeling like she was just seconds from losing two of her very best friends. Two people that she knew the world will be less without. Two people that she knew that she would be less without.

"No, Reid, you're not. And neither is she. Both of you need help." It was simple. It was direct. And it took Reid aback.

"I…"

"Reid, you get lost?" Hotch asked, entering the room. He looked impatient, a bit irritated. Which likely meant that Gideon was.

Silently, Garcia cursed. Reid's look showed relief. He thought he'd barely escaped one. But an escape was an escape and he seemed almost giddy.

"Sorry, Hotch" Reid said, his voice absurdly cheerful. "I was just, uh, helping Garcia with…uh…" he stopped, as if trying to remember something. Then finished weakly with," Her laptop. It died."

Garcia didn't miss the fact that he was intentionally avoiding her eyes. Which, of course, made sense. Because now she had him over a proverbial barrel. Now she really knew that something was wrong with him.

His memory was such that he could recall every word he'd ever read. She'd seen him look up at the placard which read SWEET JAMES. That had been less than five minutes earlier. That he'd already forgotten it was a damning thing indeed.

A third and final red flag.

"Do you need him?" Hotch asked her, a bit of amusement in his tone. For half a second Garcia allowed herself to feel a flush of affection for Hotch. He always tried to understand her quirkiness, gave her free reign to express it and sometimes even encouraged and protected it.

"No," she said, meeting his eyes. Telling him a story. And while Hotch didn't quite get what she was saying, he nodded at her. Imperceptibly, but there nonetheless. A simple statement that told her that he'd be back later. Back to hear what she had to tell him.

Again, without looking at her, Reid turned and exited the room, Hotch following close behind. The moment they were gone, Garcia got up and shut the door. She took a breath and crossed back over to her computer, prepared to do something she'd always vowed she'd never do.

Prepared to cross line she'd always promised she never would.

But desperate times called for desperate measures. And three red flags was three too many.

Dropping down into the chair in front of her desktop, she cast a quick sideways at James and then returned her full attention back to her main computer- the one that she was fully aware could be hiding a Pandora's Box, one which she really didn't care to open.

One which she knew she had to.

The screen was still showing a picture of Gibson Barrett. His background was for the most part bland, with the exception of a restraining order that had been filed against him by one of his exes. She claimed that he'd been stalking her, calling her at all hours of the night.

According to his financial data, he and JJ had been living on the same street for little over four months. During that time, he'd been pretty much the perfect neighbor. Not even a call for disturbing the peace.

Still, there was something about the stalking that made the hair on the back of Garcia's neck stand up. Something that made her wonder if JJ wasn't hiding something, intentionally not volunteering information.

But for now, that would have to wait. Because the clues she needed to solve that puzzle weren't in the computer system, they were in JJ's head. And JJ was with Morgan and Prentiss.

Reid, however, part of his secret was in the system.

Locked away and filed under two words: patient confidentiality. Even Gideon and Hotch were in the dark about the details, details that Reid had asked not be disclosed.

He'd said he was okay, said he'd needed for his friends and co-workers not to know everything he'd been through. And Hotch and Gideon who had as many secrets as everyone else, had agreed to that.

But they shouldn't have.

Because in short, he, like JJ, was hiding something that mattered.

"Patient confidentiality," she muttered was an irritated growl.

To hell with that.

Reaching for her keyboard, she typed the words: SPENCER REID. A few moments passed as she considered whether or not she should actually hit the ENTER button.

Because once she did, she knew that there would be no going back.

Five seconds. Then ten. By the time the clock hit fifteen seconds, she realized that there was already no going back.

Her friends needed her.

They desperately needed help that they weren't going to ask for. Whether because of pride or fear, it just wasn't going to happen. Not on their own at least.

And so now, there was only this.

Invading their privacy. Crossing the line. Hurting them to save them.

She closed her eyes. Took a breath.

Her family needed her.

And so she hit ENTER.


	8. Shuffle

**WRITER'S NOTE: Okay, this chapter shakes things up just a bit. Four different characters get a POV. It's mostly meant to shuffle the order of the individual character POVs. And to move the story forward. Next up, however - shuffle aside - is JJ. As always, thank you for any and all feedback. There's some dramatic stuff coming up down the line so stick with me - this rollercoaster is about to pick up speed.**

**And yeah, feedback does make me grin like a fool.  
**

* * *

SHUFFLE.

* * *

Spencer Reid rubbed his hands together, felt the sweat go from palm to palm. The porcelain was cold on his feet, too cold. As he lifted one of his feet so that he could strip off his bizarrely colored sock, he stumbled a bit, his knee buckling and nearly flinging him over the toilet.

In the back of his head, he wondered just what the hell he was doing.

That morning, he'd woken up on the floor of his room, his hand throbbing from fifteen or twenty small cuts. He'd found the glass from his mirror on the marbled tile and in that moment, he'd realized that he was spinning.

Losing control more and more with each moment.

And so he'd decided to stop. Chosen to cease and desist.

Empowered himself with that decision.

None of the others had noticed his wounded hand. They were so used to his odd movements that none of them had realized that he'd been concealing his hand beneath the cuff of his sweater.

He figured he could quit without any of them ever knowing that he'd been using. Then he wouldn't have to let anyone down.

Then he wouldn't have to see their looks of disappointment.

But as the day had gone on, as morning had turned to afternoon, as the stress of the new case had begun to build and as his mind had stopped whirling as it should, instead settling for a slow and worthless sputter, he'd begun to think if maybe he shouldn't quit slowly.

Just a bit at a time.

It wouldn't take long, he'd reasoned.

Maybe a week or so. Just a little bit less with each dose.

But that plan had gone out the window when the anger inside of him, white hot and unreasonable beyond words, had begun to build.

Towards her. Towards all of them.

But mostly towards her. Not because she deserved it. Not because he hated her. He could never hate her. But because she was an easy target. One whose own eyes constantly accepted the blame.

She made it easy that way. Her guilt, her remorse. She practically invited him to hate her.

And when the anger built, it was just so easy to do exactly that. And he hated that about himself.

Hated that he could ever have feelings like for someone that he adored as much as he did her.

Adored was hardly the word for what he felt for her, but that was another matter altogether.

And it only made him hate more what he was becoming.

Nothing but a giant mess of anger, fury and desperation.

One that constantly wondered if it could find the old Spencer Reid at the bottom of the vial.

One that was sure it could. If he just used a little more.

Just a little more.

Just for today.

Only today.

Because what had happened in Garcia's office, the things he'd said about JJ, the feelings he'd had about her, well they weren't him.

And so reaching into his messenger's bag, he pulled out one of the vials and stared at it.

"Less," he croaked out as he filled a syringe up with exactly the same amount that he'd injected the night before.

What had happened in Garcia's office had pushed him over. His mouth, his mind, all of it had moved on its own. He'd said thing he wished he hadn't. Things he wouldn't have said if he'd been in control.

And he needed control.

They needed him to have control.

And so into the small space between his toes, he injected the needle, realizing that for the first time, he was shooting up while at work.

Shame flooded his senses.

Within moments, he felt better.

More in control.

Tomorrow, he reasoned, he would use less. Tomorrow, he promised, he would stop.

* * *

Jennifer Jareau stepped into her office and closed the door behind her, knowing that Prentiss and Morgan were only a few steps behind her, knowing that both of them desperately wanted to talk to her. Knowing that she desperately didn't want to have the conversations that they wanted to have. 

She hoped that the closed door would send the desired message loud and clear. Talking was not something she was all that interested in.

Not right now anyway.

She moved over to her purse, which was under the desk. Dropping to a knee, she rifled through it, until her fingers closed over the small white bottle at the bottom. She flipped off the cap and tossed three, no four pills into her hand. Aspirin. Nothing stronger. Nothing to worry about.

But right now and with this terrible banger of a headache, three would hardly be enough. Four just might, five would probably be pushing it.

She stood up and glanced around the room, searching for liquid. Finally her eyes settled on a half-empty water bottle sitting next to a stack of files. She tilted her head slightly, observing that the files looked like they were about to slide and collapse. Create chaos in their wake.

How damned appropriate.

A small chuckle and then she picked up the bottle, popped the pills and washed them down. The irony that she'd experienced almost this exact moment less than twenty- four hours(then with sleeping pills) was hardly lost on her.

But she didn't think Morgan would kick down her office door because she'd just chosen to pop a few aspirin.

Or at least she hoped not.

A knock on the door made her turn towards it and she sighed. Apparently the closed door hadn't sent the message she'd hoped for.

"It's open," she more breathed than said. And as the door began to open, she moved her hand over the desk and pushed the aspirin bottle towards the floor. It fell just right, landing next to her wallet inside of her purse. She allowed herself the smallest of smiles, refusing to think about the reason she hadn't wanted whoever was entering to see bottle.

She hadn't wanted them to worry.

She hated when people worried about her.

She hadn't when people doubted that she could do her job.

"JJ," Emily said as she entered, her face showing her concern. "Everything okay?

"Yeah, why?"

"Your door is closed. Your door is never closed."

And this was true. Which only reminded JJ once more of the statement she'd been trying to make, the statement which Prentiss had apparently ignored completely.

"It closed behind me," JJ lied.

Emily offered her a small thin smile. "Okay. Well Hotch wants us all in the conference room to de-brief."

"Sure," the blonde replied, stepping past the older woman.

"Hey, JJ?"

She turned to look at Emily. "Yeah?"

"We are all here for you. I'm here for you," Emily said, locking eyes with her younger co-worker. She could see the resistance there, buried beneath the weariness. Still, she pushed on. "I don't care how stupid you may think it is or if you think you don't have a right to feel the way you do, I'm still here and I'm willing to listen whenever you're ready to talk."

For a moment, JJ felt her mouth open, like she wanted to say something, but couldn't quite get the words out. Then, feeling a gasp gurgling up through her throat, she settled for clamping her mouth shut and nodding slowly.

She wasn't sure it wasn't a lie, but then again, she wasn't sure it was a lie either.

Because the weight was getting heavier

And it occurred to her more than a time or two that just letting it out, just venting the pain, well maybe that'd help.

Or maybe it'd just make her weak.

She wasn't sure which.

And so the struggle within went on.

But Emily didn't need to know that. Even if she most certainly did.

"Good," Emily said, her eyes staying with JJ's for just a moment longer.

Making their point, JJ knew.

Then, once satisfied that her point had been made, she turned and walked away. A few seconds later, JJ followed.

* * *

"Okay, let's review again," Hotch said once JJ and Prentiss had taken their seats. He gazed over at the women, saw that they were both wearing neutral expressions. Unreadable and yet somehow they both look somewhat troubled to him. His eyes went to Reid next, who seemed calmer than he had just twenty minutes earlier. 

Twenty minutes earlier, after his conversation with Garcia, he'd seemed almost angry. Impatient. Irritated. Gideon had even told him to get some air. Apparently it had helped.

Hotch suspected that something else had as well.

And was more annoyed than he cared to admit that there just wasn't the time to figure out what. Not yet at least.

Because like always, people were dying.

And not just on the inside.

"Three victims that were chosen, one was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He should be excluded from the profile," Morgan started.

"One was a father with a large family, one was a deadbeat and the other one was a player," Reid continued, his voice squeaking a bit. If you didn't know better, you'd almost think that he was his old self. Eager, curious and quick with an answer.

"So their marital status is probably not part of what made the Unsub pick them.," Emily said, more to herself than the other. She glanced up and Hotch caught her eye. And because he could tell she needed it, he nodded. Her lip quirked just a bit, appreciative. He reminded himself to do that more often. Because she was a good agent. And because, if he pushed all of his irritation over how she'd came to be a member of the BAU away, the trust was, she deserved to know that she was a good agent.

"We can probably rule out race as well," Gideon commented, leaning over to point at the pictures. "Barrett and Bell were both white, but Alvarez was Latino."

"Financial status as well," Hotch said. "Alvarez DiSparto had a good job, but because of how big his family was, he was barely scrapping by. Thomas Bell, well he was dirt poor. Gibson Barrett was very well off. He had almost a hundred thousand put away."

"So much for victimology," Emily sighed.

"No, it's there," Gideon insisted. "We're just not seeing it. There's something that ties these three men together. "

"Besides the fact that they're men," Morgan noted.

"Okay, let's break up then. Prentiss, you and Morgan go interview Mrs. DiSparto," Hotch instructed. "Find out if her husband was acting at all oddly before the attack. And if not, find out what he was doing. Anything and everything you can."

"Sure," Emily nodded. Morgan also signaled his acknowledgement with a brief incline of his head.

"Reid and I will talk to Thomas Bell's ex-wife," Gideon said. "See if maybe her husband had been in contact with her."

"That means JJ and I will take Barrett's office."

"His office?" JJ blinked, speaking up for the first time since the meeting had begun. Hotch wondered if she'd been paying attention at all, but then quickly dismissed that because it was JJ and even in the worst of states, she was always on her game.

They had a lot in common, Hotch mused. Both of them worked too hard, were too stubborn and far too controlled.

She smiled more, but it was a poker face, just like his scowl.

"Unless you know of someone else that he might have confided in," Hotch answered, meeting her eyes. She shook her head, the motion quickly breaking the visual contact. Quickly telling him that she didn't want him looking into her because she wasn't sure what he'd find there.

"Okay then," Gideon said as he pushed himself to his feet. "Everyone meet back here at five at the latest."

Quick nods of agreement and the room emptied. Hotch turned to JJ.

"You want to drive?"

And suddenly she laughed. It was exactly what he'd been hoping for.

Then, wrinkling her nose, just a bit, "Really?"

He shrugged. "Sure."

And again, she smiled. Maybe her eyes even danced.

He felt relief wash over him because well, that was something.

This job could rob that from you. The ability to smile without reserve. The ability to laugh without reason. The ability to act like a small child about the silly things in life.

Like getting to drive the company car.

She'd driven Gideon in to the office earlier that day, but that had been her car. This was the company car.

She was usually the one buckled into the backseat.

Like one of the kids.

And now she was smiling like a kid,

If you still had that, Hotch figured, then in the end, maybe you could still be okay.

* * *

"Hey, girl," Derek said as he entered the room. She looked up at him and smiled, relieved that her door squeaked when it opened, relieved that she'd been able to change the screen she'd been working on before he'd been able see it. 

Because she wasn't quite ready to share with the class just yet.

"Hi," she smiled, tilting her cheek to accept a small kiss. "What's up?"

"Nothing. We're on our way to interview the wife of one of the vics. I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing," And then he smiled, the one which deepened every line of his face. The one that met his eyes.

"Oh, sweet," she said, touching his cheek. His hand went over hers and she remembered why she adored this man. "I'm fine." And though she knew it was a lie, she was pretty sure he didn't. And for now, that'd do.

"You need anything, girl?"

She shook her head.

"Okay." Then he turned and started for the door. Just outside of it, Garcia could see Prentiss waiting. Suddenly he stopped and turned around. "You'll tell me when you're ready, right?"

Scolding herself for thinking that he wouldn't be able to see right through her, she nodded slowly. "You know I will."

"Okay," he said again and this time he left.

She turned back to her screen, pushed a button and brought up the image she'd been staring at before Morgan had entered.

The one showing that drug tests run by the hospital after Reid had been brought in had shown a significant amount of Dilaudid in them.

The ones showing that he'd been injected numerous times.

The ones that told her exactly what wqs going on with Spencer Reid.


	9. JJ and Hotch

**AUTHOR'S NOTES: Because I love to change formats, once again I'm shaking things up. For this and the next several, the chapters will be told from two points of view- the two characters involved in the scenes. In this case, JJ and Hotch. The first two parts will be one POV and then the other, the third part will be a combining. I hope it reads well and works out.**

** I'm attempting to try to dig into the psychology of the characters now. Sometimes it's not about the actual events, but what those situations make you see in yourself. Those demons can be worse than the physical scars. **

**As always, feedback rocks. Thank you muchly.**

* * *

She drove like someone who had grown up in a small town.

Which was, of course, why she wasn't allowed to drive all that often.

She took corners too hard, like she was trying to see If the SUV could manage on two wheels instead of four. And while she wasn't prone to fits of profanity laced road rage, she drove like she thought she was riding in a large truck.

One lifted ten feet off the road.

At least.

Only Reid could stand to drive with her under normal circumstances. Morgan typically didn't mind, but that was only because he loved to harass her about it.

He, on the other hand, couldn't stand it.

But, Aaron Hotch mused, she'd needed it.

She'd needed to have control for a few minutes.

Even if it made his stomach roll like a bowling ball.

Ironic really. He'd seen bodies torn to pieces, the carnage almost unimaginable and he'd never flinched.

But driving with JJ, well, it made him wish he had a bottle of Pepto in his hip pocket.

"Have you ever been to his office?" he asked suddenly, aware of the fact that they'd driven almost the entire fifteen minute ride to the law office in silence.

For a moment she seemed shocked, even a bit surprised. But then she pushed it back, a hand flipping a strand of hair back behind her ear. "No," was all she said. Not cold. Just simple. As if she was hoping that her one word answer would end the conversation.

He was sure that she knew better.

Hotch nodded. "Okay." He glanced down at the file in his hands, the one that told Gibson Barrett's story.

Part of it at least.

He'd had a police record, a history of stalking exes.

It made Hotch wonder.

"JJ," he started, not terribly sure that he was going to actually ask her.

She turned her head towards him and again he saw exhaustion in her blue eyes. She was alert, but weary.

He figured maybe when this was over, maybe then he'd push her into taking a few days off.

Maybe even force her if he had to.

She'd resist, protest, claim that the unit needed her, that they couldn't manage without her.

And she'd be right.

But they'd have to try.

Because he wasn't about to lose her like he'd lost Elle.

Even now, even months later, it was hard to put into thoughts, much less words, what Elle Greenaway had meant to him.

Or more to the point, what losing her had meant to him.

She'd been one of his agents, one of his people. More than just his responsibility, someone he had genuinely cared about.

Someone he hadn't been able to save.

He thought about that day often. The one where she'd done what she'd done.

Killed Lee.

In cold blood.

She'd never admitted to it and he was glad for that, but they all had known the truth.

She'd snapped, crossed that line and then had no choice, but to walk away.

Even now, even months later, he wondered what would have happened had she admitted the truth of what she'd done.

Would he have been able to read her her rights? Snap the cuffs around her wrists? Would he have been able to walk her down a stone path to hell?

A voice in his head always whispered "no" even as his lips said "yes."

"Hotch?" JJ said suddenly, pulling his thoughts violently away from Elle.

"Hm?" he asked, then remembered his place. "Oh. I wanted to ask you about…you and Barrett?"

"I told you, I told that cop and I told Gideon, there was nothing between Barrett and I. Just a bad first date."

Her eyes said she was lying.

Years of staring back at witnesses, years of studying criminals, years of vetting political allies and enemies, they had all taught him how to read a lie from a mile away.

And Jennifer Jareau was lying.

He just wasn't sure he knew how to call her on it.

"Up here," JJ noted, pointing to a massive glass building about eight hundred yards up and to the right.

"McCovey, Blanton and Corgee," Hotch said, sighing.

"What?" she asked, a look of vague amusement crossing her face. "You're a lawyer, we're heading into your element."

He laughed. "No, if we were in my office, it would be my element. Here, well, it's like diving into a tank full of sharks."

"Any advice?" JJ quipped.

"Swim fast."

* * *

Jennifer Jareau had never considered herself to be a vain woman. Sure, she liked to look good. Sure, she got a kick out of watching heads spin when she walked into a room, all dressed to the nines.

But at the end of the day, when she stepped into her own home, she liked to slum it up in flannel pajamas bottoms and a wifebeater.

Now, however, walking with Hotch down the long marbled hallway towards the front desk of McCovery, Blanton and Corgee, she rather enjoyed hearing the sound of her high heels clicking against the floor.

Almost rhythmically.

Almost like normal.

Normal seemed so long ago.

Almost like a dream.

Back before the Georgia.

Back before Tobias, the dogs and what had happened to Reid.

Back before she'd met Gibson Barrett.

"Hi," she heard Hotch say as they approached the front desk. A young blonde woman wearing a headset was sitting there, looking cheerful but terribly bothered.

"Hi," the woman replied, wearing a smile that reminded JJ a little of Jack Nicholson. Too big and rather well, manipulative.

Like she was fully aware of the fact that she was the one who pulled the strings around this place.

It was a lot of power. A lot of responsibility. And potentially, if the wrong choices were made, a lot of guilt.

JJ knew the feeling all too well.

"Agent Hotchner and Agent Jareau, we're with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit," Hotch said, flashing his badge. JJ quickly followed suit.

"FBI?" the blonde blinked, her expression unreadable.

"We need to see Gibson Barrett's office."

"Why?" a man's voice said from behind them. They both turned to see a tall man with dark hair. He was in his late fifties, but looked quite a bit younger. Then, seeing the confused looks that Hotch and JJ were throwing his way, he extended his hand. "Harry Corgee. I'm one of the senior partners here."

"Agents Hotchner and Jareau," Hotch said again.

"With the BAU, so I heard," Corgee nodded. Then he looked hard at JJ. "Hey, I know you. You're Gibson's girlfriend, right?"

JJ twitched.

It would have been almost funny if it wasn't so worrisome.

"No," she said quickly, her mind racing. The look on Hotch's face, well she didn't like it. It was the kind that suggested that an interrogation was soon to come.

It was the kind that told her that she'd soon have to admit the truth.

And it wasn't that it was so bad, just that it was so personal.

But that line, that simple beautiful line, it was breaking apart.

It was vanishing.

This case was about to make it disappear altogether.

Silently, angrily, she cursed Barrett.

And immediately felt bad for it.

He was already dead. No real reason to rub it in. So to speak anyway.

"No," she finally managed. "I'm not his girlfriend."

"Really?" Corgee frowned. "He's got a picture of you on his desk."

"Can we see it?" Hotch asked and again, JJ felt herself twitch.

She felt the line fade.

"I mean, his office," Hotch elaborated.

"Of course, but perhaps you'd like to wait for Gibson to come in. He's running a bit late, but he should be in shortly."

JJ glanced over at Hotch, noted the lack of expression on his face, schooled her own face to reflect the same.

"Sir, I'm sorry to tell you that Gibson Barrett was murdered last night," Hotch told him, his voice even and calm. JJ found herself thankful that he'd done the notification.

Normally it would have fallen to her.

But she wasn't sure what she would have said.

"Sir, I regret to inform you that the bastard who apparently thought that I was his girlfriend was butchered in the backseat of his car last night?"

Yeah, probably not a great way to go.

But thankfully, Hotch to the rescue.

"Oh, my God," Corgee said. "What…what happened?

"We're not sure yet," Hotch replied. "We're trying to get a feel for who Mr. Barrett was so that we can figure out why what happened last night happened."

"Of course, yes. Right this way," Corgee nodded as he led the JJ and Hotch down another marble hallway, towards a row of massively sized offices.

"Where was Mr. Barrett in the hierarchy around here?" Hotch asked.

"Working pretty hard on becoming a partner. He was very good with clients, especially female ones."

JJ snorted and then immediately winced when she caught the look Hotch tossed back at her.

She scolded herself, she knew better.

She was usually more controlled.

But this case, not only were the lines blurring, so was her self-control.

And suddenly her head started pounding again.

Like a sledgehammer, just above the bridge of her nose, between her eyes.

"Any problems?" Hotch pushed on.

"None."

"Were you aware of his criminal record?"

"You mean the restraining order?"

"More the stalking part of it," Hotch said simply.

"Yes, we were aware. He explained it to us satisfaction, said that it was just a relationship that had gotten out of control. He'd been young and well young people tend to let their emotions get away from them."

Hotch nodded like he had accepted that answer.

At that moment, Corgee opened an office door and they stepped into an office decorated heavily with sports memorabilia.

Yankees pennants on the wall. A framed Knicks poster just above his desk. A mounted bat signed by Babe Ruth just below his law degrees.

"Here we are," Corgee said as he moved behind Barrett's desk. He picked up a framed picture and turned it around. Immediately, JJ flinched.

It was a photo of her from the Christmas part several months earlier. Slightly inebriated, grinning ear to ear. In the background, face turned away from the camera, was Reid, in mid box-step.

She'd loved the photo because of how dopey Reid looked in it.

She'd thought she'd lost the photo several weeks back.

Right after the first date with Barrett.

Apparently she hadn't lost it at all.

"JJ?" Hotch whispered. She looked up at him, unable to mask the confusion in her eyes.

And the anger.

She was pissed. And scared. And completely thrown off-balance.

But mostly, she was severely pissed off.

"I…I didn't give him that…" but then she stopped, trying desperately to grab at that line. The line that protected her personal line.

The line that was little more than a faint shadow now.

"Is everything okay, Agent Jareau?" Corgee asked, his brow furrowing.

She nodded, gulped once and then yanked it back inside, despite how her stomach was churning. "Yes. Do you mind giving Agent Hotchner and I moment to look around?"

"I trust you know not to look at confidential documents?"

"Of course," Hotch replied.

"Okay. Well, I need to tell the partners anyway so if you need me, I'll be three doors down, in Jack McCovey's office."

JJ nodded and forced a smile. Corgee replied with one of his own, looking troubled. Then he turned and exited.

"JJ?"

"We should check for a datebook or a calendar," she said quickly. "Maybe he met with the Unsub before the attack."

"Right," Hotch agreed, frowning slightly. He crossed over to the desk and yanked on one of the drawers, finding it locked.

"Try the inside of the monkey's head," JJ told him, pointing towards a decapitated stuffed monkey's head that was sitting on the edge of the desk. There were about thirty push pins coming out of it.

Hotch reached over and picked it up. He glanced inside and sure enough, saw the tiny gold keys. He extracted them slowly, careful not to stab himself with one of the pins. "How did you know?"

"I may not be a profiler," she said with a small smile. "But I know men. Something like that, well men always think it's a clever place to hide things. Take Morgan, he has a baseball on his desk that's been hollowed out. His desk keys are in there."

She didn't miss the smile of respect that Hotch threw her way. The "like it or not, you're halfway to being one of us" look.

Normally it would have made her beam.

But knowing that the discussion about her personal life was right around the corner, well, she wasn't really feeling the happy vibes.

She watched as he unlocked the desk and pulled open the drawers. He reached in and drew out several folders. Most of them were tagged with client names. "Take all of these names down, but don't look at the actual files.

JJ nodded, swiped a notebook of the desktop and began writing names down while Hotch continued going through the desk.

"Hey, JJ," he said suddenly. She looked up to see him holding a Polaroid. One that showed her sitting next to Barrett at a table full of empty beer bottles.

She sighed. "On the date we went on, there was a guy walking around taking pictures. I guess Barrett kept it."

For a moment, Hotch looked like he was going to push for more, like he knew that she wasn't exactly telling the whole truth, but then, abruptly, he backed off.

JJ wasn't naïve enough to believe that he'd let it go.

Here just wasn't the place for it.

But that line, well it was pretty much gone now.

She glanced over at the picture, her eyes settling on the beer bottles. A night full of drinking just to make it through.

Not exactly drunk.

Not exactly sober either.

"Okay," Hotch said. "I don't see anything else."

"I've got all the names. We can have Garcia run them through when we get back."

Hotch nodded, then pushed the door open. JJ walked through it first, Hotch just a few steps behind.

He'd told her to swim fast when thrown into a tank full of sharks.

Good advice.

She wished she'd taken it when it had come to Gibson Barrett.

She wished she'd taken it in regards to a lot of things in her life.

* * *

Hotch settled himself behind the wheel, happy to be back in control, thankful that the blonde would no longer be able to test his intestinal fortitude.

He started the engine up and drove out of the parking garage.

"He seems to have been fairly well liked around there," Hotch pointed out, eyes on the road.

"He could be charming," she answered shortly, knowing that no matter what tone she used, she wasn't going to get out of answering his questions.

It was a just a matter of when he decided to get the ball rolling.

"Tell me about it," he said conversationally.

Okay, so now, she sighed.

And the line was gone.

And he was looking at her. Level. Without accusation. Almost without emotion.

It was a bit unsettling.

She took a breath. "We went out."

"How many times?" It was like an interrogation. Short questions, no more time for bullshit.

And so, her foot brushing against the last of the line as she crossed over it, she replied, "Twice."

"You've been telling everyone once." Again, not an accusation, just a statement meant to probe for the truth. She hated that he was using that tone with her.

"That's because the second time, well he kind of pushed me into it."

"How?"

"He wouldn't leave me alone. He'd call me at all hours of the day. At night, in the early morning, I mean it, you name a time and he called me. At home, at work, even when I was out of town."

"You didn't tell him to stop?"

"Of course, I did. He promised me that he just wanted to make up for the first date. He insisted it had gone badly. Said that if I went out with him a second time, he'd stop calling me unless I wanted him to. He was kind of pathetic about it and I guess I felt bad for him. I figured what could it hurt."

"Is the Polaroid from the second date?"

"Yes, we went to a fish and chips kind of place downtown. The Dock."

"I know of it. Haley's a big fan. All you can drink beer for twenty dollars."

She sighed. "Yeah."

He nodded, his eyes telling her that suddenly, it was all making a bit more sense.

But not quite enough.

There was still more to tell. More to learn.

"So you drank too much?"

"Yeah. Turned out that apologetic Barrett wasn't really all that apologetic. He was just as unbearable and obnoxious as he'd been on the first date. I suppose I could have just gotten up and called a taxi, but I figured since I was already there, I might as well enjoy the dinner and drinks part of it. I guess you could say that I got through the night the best way I could.

And…"

And…" her voice caught. She really didn't want to be having this conversation with him. He was like a parental figure to her and this was beyond uncomfortable.

Thankfully Hotch got it. And nodded. "I see. And I take it that the morning after…"

"Was awkward and uncomfortable. And what's worse, after that, he became ever more obsessed. Two, three calls every hour. Late last week I finally went over to his place, told him that either he knocked it off or I would file charges."

"Did he stop?"

"Yes."

"But?" Hotch asked, eyebrow lifting a bit. She was still holding back.

"He tried to get a little rough with me first. And a little grabby. When he wouldn't let go, I punched him."

Hotch couldn't help but smile just a bit. After a moment he asked, "Which is how you found about his glass jaw?"

JJ seemed a bit surprised. Hotch hadn't been at the house when she'd told Morgan and Prentiss about Barrett's habit of getting knocked out.

"Morgan put it in his case notes and then put his case notes into Barrett's file," Hotch told her. "I looked them over on the way to the law office."

"Oh," she said simply, mentally admonishing herself for not realizing that. Morgan liked to notate everything, tended to believe that even the smallest detail could turn out to be relevant. Then, elaborating, "Yes and no. He had told me previously about getting punched several times, but when I hit him, I wasn't thinking about that. I was just trying to get his hands off of me. I was just trying to get away."

"And…you did?" there was the smallest hint of fear in his tone. Like he was almost afraid that maybe she hadn't.

But then she nodded and her eyes gleamed with a bit of pride. "He went out like a rock. I left the house. That's the last I saw of him. I guess…I figured maybe he'd finally gotten the message."

"You could have told us…you could have told me all of this."

"I know," she replied. "I just…Hotch, you understand, right? I need to be able to hold my own. I need you guys to know that I can."

"This is about Georgia, isn't it?"

She flinched. But didn't deny it.

Then, quietly, "Do you realize that the only time I've fired my gun in the three years that I've been with this unit, I was shooting at dogs."

"That's a good thing," he told her. "Trust me, you don't want that first kill."

"No," she admitted. "But I need to know that if I had to take that shot, I could."

Hotch didn't say anything, for a moment didn't quite seem sure what to say.

And so JJ pushed on. "Barrett was a bastard. I don't know if he was a bad man, but he was a creep who thought he was entitled to anything and everything. And the more resistance, the better. The only reason he wanted me was because I didn't want him. If I had been like all of the other women in his life, chasing after him, he'd have forgotten about me."

"Probably," Hotch confirmed, wondering where she was heading.

"But he was my bastard, my personal one to deal with."

"See that's the problem," Hotch replied. "All of us, you, Elle, Reid, even Gideon and I, we've all gotten to used to our secrets. When we're in the field, we cover each other's backs, but when things are quiet, we all go our separate ways. Doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it. Morgan said it, we all practically live together already. Seems kind of silly to work so hard to hide things from each other."

"We all need respect."

"JJ," Hotch said, turning down a street. "I respect you because I know who you are and I know what you're capable of. My respect is not tied to making a few bad decisions. Believe it or not, we'll all human and just because we deal with the minds of others doesn't mean that we're completely capable of managing our own issues."

She nodded slowly.

And then he added, "I have no fear, none, that if it came down to it, if my life was on the line, you could take that shot. I know you could. And so does Morgan and Gideon and Prentiss…"

"And Reid?"

Hotch smiled thinly. "And Reid."

JJ answered his comment was an unconvincing smile of her own. One that told him that she knew that he wasn't as sure as he was trying to sound.

But before she could challenge him, Hotch suddenly jumped. Not much. Just a bit. He reached down to his belt and pulled his pager free. He looked down at what was written there and frowned.

"Everything okay?" JJ asked.

"Yeah," Hotch replied. "It's from Garcia. She says she needs to see me as soon as I get back in. Says it's an emergency."

And somewhere deep in JJ's gut, she felt a sudden coldness snap.

Hotch felt the same thing.


	10. Morgan and Prentiss

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: As promised, here is the next chapter. To be honest, this story started out as a case-fic, but I think it has become more a tale about the dynamics of the group - the family ties between the team and how they work, dysfunctional and all. I hope you enjoy and thank you for all the kinds words- they mean the world to me. **

* * *

  
"So," Emily Prentiss started after almost fifteen minutes of driving. "What do you think is wrong with him?"

Derek Morgan turned his head just a bit, his dark eyes sweeping across her face briefly before returning to the crowded highway in front of him. The radio had said that there was an accident about two exits up. It sounded like a simple fender-bender, but smack in the middle of lunch traffic, it'd snarled things up pretty bad.

"Reid?" he asked, his voice even and controlled, not giving away too much.

She nodded, her eyes locked on his carefully schooled expression. He was holding it together and that told her more than she figured his words would. He was at the very least worried about the young genius, but she wondered if scared might be a better word.

"I think…" Morgan began before pausing to consider his words. Then, "I think he probably needs help. And I think we should have all seen it a long time ago."

"Like with JJ."

"Yes, but JJ's different. She has her own issues but I think they have more to do with this being the first time she's ever had to deal with all of this. Reid's had the nightmares before, she hasn't. Up until Georgia, her contact with the actual crimescenes was pretty limited. She saw almost everything through pictures and reports. She'd learned how to separate herself. But seeing what she did there, it's new and it's horrible and she doesn't know how to cope. And what's worse, she's too proud to ask for help. I think she thinks if she does, we'll think she's weak or something."

"You don't think Reid's too proud?" Emily asked, eyebrow up.

"If it were only nightmares? No, he's asked me about them before." He chuckled just a bit, as if remembering a bit of the past. "He was kinda pissed at the time that I sicced Gideon on him, but it's the job. We all get them and if we're going to make it, we have to learn to deal with them,"

She nodded slowly, not bothering to tell him that she was still having a devil of a time dealing with her own nightmares. The only thing that was helping was the fact that she'd seen a lot of horrible things even before the BAU. Things she would move heaven and hell not to talk about it.

She figured those things, those experiences, well maybe they were what – as she'd told JJ and Hotch - helped her to compartmentalize better than most. In short, those previous nightmares were what helped her cope.

As best she could anyway. Because the dreams were still there.

A woman torn to shreds by rabid dogs.

A young boy lying dead in the street.

A girl who would never hug her father goodnight again because some sick bastard had turned her hopes and dreams into a way to lure her a horrific death.

The dreams weren't going away anytime soon.

But she could deal.

Better than JJ and Reid anyway.

"So, you don't think nightmares are his problem?"

"No," Morgan said simply as her jerked the SUV into the next lane. The traffic was near to maddening and she could see Morgan, always impatient, tensing up, his hands tightening on the steering wheel.

She wondered whether it was the traffic or the conversation, which was upsetting him more.

She waited a few seconds for him to speak again and was just about to ask him another question to push the conversation forward when he said softly, "When I was in college, I had a good friend, one of the best guys I've ever known in my life. Kind of a joker, but always there to listen. Didn't matter what about. He could make you feel better. That was his gift."

He stopped, stared out at the traffic. Emily knew enough to wait. Knew that the rest of the story was coming. Knew instinctively that it probably didn't have a good end.

"We played ball together. He was a receiver. Off the field one of my best friends, on the field, my favorite go-to guy. He was automatic. Then one night, I throw to him and as he's coming down with the ball, he gets nailed. I swear, I heard the sound of his shoulder crack. Everyone there did. And he's lying on the field screaming."

She watched as Morgan absently dropped a hand down to his knee and rubbed gingerly at it. She knew that he'd stopped playing because of a football injury and she wondered if this story wasn't bringing more than one set of bad memories back to the surface.

"He fractured his shoulder and broke his arm in three places. Had to have screws put in. He tried for rehab at first but it was a no go - his football career was pretty much over. After that, he changed. He started using anything he could, drinking until he passed out. He blamed it on the pain and maybe that was part of it, but I think what had happened to him, he just couldn't…he couldn't understand. He couldn't make sense of it. He hadn't done anything to deserve it and yet this horrible thing had happened to him. After that, I think he just didn't see any reason to care anymore. He died during my senior year. One night he just took too much. Probably never knew what hit him."

He fell silent, eyes on the road again. Traffic was starting to thin a bit, perhaps just enough to get to one of the exits and make the rest of the trek via side streets.

"So, you think Reid is using something?"

He turned to look at her and she saw a dullness there. Maybe even a sadness. But then, quietly, "I don't know, but I do think he's falling apart. I think, like my buddy from school, he's wondering why him."

"I've wondered that, too," Emily admitted, glancing down at her hands. "Of all of us, why did it have to be those two that had to go through that?"

"Because life isn't fair," Morgan replied as he pulled the SUV off the highway. "If it were, we wouldn't have a job."

And it was just that simple.

And painfully still.

Still, not willing to let it be that simple, she pushed on, "So what do we do?"

He sighed and she could hear the frustration in the sound. Not at her, but at the hopelessness and helplessness of the situation. It was damnable. "I don't know. It's not like we have any proof."

"Really?" Emily countered. "Tell me you haven't noticed how his moods seem to turn on a dime these days. One moment he's on edge and snappy, like he can't focus. The next, usually after he's disappeared…"

She stopped and the realization of how everything had been right in front of her face the entire time…well it hit her hard.

Too hard.

"Yeah," Morgan said softly. "I'd noticed."

"Then we need to speak to Gideon."

"He's noticed, too."

"So why haven't we done anything?" she asked, her voice rising just a bit.

"For the same reason all of us have been leaving JJ alone. We've all known what's been fucking her up. We all know she isn't sleeping. We all know she's off her game. And we even know how to help her. But because none of us want to let anyone in, we don't intrude. That's the way it works. If she comes to us, we'll help. If he comes to us…"

"You felt that way about Chicago. Like it was none of our business."

He nodded and looked away. Like he knew that holding back from these people was madness. And so once again, seeking an opening, Emily pushed on.

"And what if he doesn't ever come to us? What if he's high one day and someone has a gun to your back and he doesn't fire when he should?"

She saw him open his mouth, as if to instinctively defend his friend, but then, "I know."

"And what if one day, he takes too much."

Again, "I know."

"Are you telling me that Hotch knows but won't do anything?" Emily asked with a hint of disbelief. Hotch hardly seemed the type to let the rest of his people or the job be endangered just because of stupid group pride.

"I think he wants to be sure because once he opens that door, the ramifications and not just for Reid, but for all of us…well there are people at the Bureau who have never exactly been fond of some of the people on this team. Outing Reid, it could have consequences."

"That makes it sound so political," Emily noted, with just a hint of dismay. She'd thought better of Hotch, thought it to be like a parent to the team. Which meant that he had to know that sometimes – regardless of the ramifications – hard decisions had to be made.

Then she scolded herself. For making it sound so easy. For thinking like a heartless and soul-less bureaucrat.

All of her friends – most of them living in other countries and corresponding via only email these days – had figured that the crimes would be the hardest part of being in the BAU. Seeing the evil that men could do.

The truth, however? It had been the people that had taken some getting used to. She'd been part of teams before but never one like this.

Never one that felt so much like family.

And despite the rather estranged family that she had, the one thing Emily knew about family was that the bonds of such always made the decisions that seemed so easy so much harder.

If Hotch outted Reid, his career could be destroyed.

He'd be allowed to stay on with the FBI – after all, it was near impossible to fire a government worker for anything less than cold blooded murder committed in front of thirty people – but it would likely be a permanent stain. And it could mean the end of Reid's days with the BAU.

Which would likely – for Reid – be just as bad as getting fired.

"We're here." Morgan said suddenly and she realized with a start that they'd driven almost ten minutes in silence. She heard the sound of the SUV parking and then he turned to look at her. "You okay?"

She smiled, perhaps a bit too big.

* * *

"You okay?" Derek Morgan asked his partner. The silence that had filled the vehicle after he'd told her that Hotch knew about Reid, well it had been deafening.

Because he'd known what she'd been thinking.

He'd been thinking the same thing.

Why the hell aren't we doing something?

But the reality was that they didn't really know. Not for sure anyway. They suspected and the signs were all there, but that just wasn't enough.

Not to do this to Reid.

And more important, who was he to be forcing anyone to out their demons? He'd been furious when the team had essentially done that to him. Yes, it had been to save him.

But still.

Still.

It just all seemed so absurd.

Emily smiled back at him as if to say that yes, she was fine. Unfortunately, all of his years in diplomacy had never taught her how to create a convincing "lie face". And some of her smiles, well they rather looked like grimaces instead.

"Maria DeSparto," Derek said then, quickly moving on, happy to have something to think about besides Reid. "Stay at home mother." He showed her a family picture, one that included Maria with her husband Alvarez and their eight children. The oldest was in his twenties and the youngest – a small pretty girl with large brown eyes – looked to be around three or so.

Emily nodded and then opened the door and got out of the car. Morgan did the same, coming around to join her in front of the house.

"The file said that Mrs. DeSparto only speaks Spanish."

"Don't worry," she replied. "Mine is excellent."

"Good because I think after three years of it in college, I know a handful of words, but none that would be useful today."

She snorted and then started towards the front door of a two-story house with a massive lawn in front of it. There were toys everywhere, a hastily discarded skateboard on it's back, showing off Tony Hawk stickers on it's belly.

Morgan stepped forward and knocked on the door. A few seconds passed and then the door opened to reveal a pretty girl of about eighteen.

"Yes?"

"Uh, hi, we're with the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. Morgan and Prentiss," he said, indicating towards Emily. "We were hoping we could speak to your mother."

"I'm sorry," the girl said. "My mother is in no state to speak to anyone."

Morgan glanced over at Emily, suddenly wishing that he'd gotten to bring JJ with him instead. Not because Emily wasn't damn good at what she did, but rather because dealing with grief was not something that he was good at him.

Because it meant going deep inside himself and finding that place that knew where the victims were coming from.

It meant remembering the pain of losing his father.

Over and over again.

JJ was good at that.

He, well not so much.

"Perhaps you can help us," Emily said, breaking him from his thoughts.

The girl seemed shocked for a moment, but then she nodded. "I can try."

"Good," Derek smiled. He hated to admit it but he knew that his charm was his strongest weapon in these situations. He knew that he possessed a gift, the ability to put people at ease even in the worst of situations.

Seemed as good a time as any to break out that gift.

The girl stepped aside and let them in. As soon as they were past the threshold, she closed the door behind them.

"What's your name?" Emily asked as Morgan turned and took in the house, noting how chaotic it was.

Which, considering the amount of kids who lived here, was to be expected.

"Isabella," the girl said with a smile. "Can I get you something to drink."

"No, thank you," Morgan replied. Emily nodded the same. Isabella accepted this and led them into the living room.

As they entered, the saw a six-year-old boy with messy hair. He was watching a cartoon, giggling at it. "This is Peter," Isabella said with an affectionate grin. "Everything is funny to him. Papa called him our little crazy man."

As if on cue, Peter looked up and laughed. "Hiya!"

"Hi," Morgan replied, unable to stop the smile from overtaking his face.

"Peter, why don't you come upstairs and play for a bit, huh?"

"I am playing," he replied.

She laughed. "Upstairs."

He scowled, then jumped off the couch. Then, the smile returning to his face, he waved at Morgan and Prentiss and took off up the stairs.

"Papa was right to call him our little crazy man," Isabella sighed. Then she motioned for everyone to sit. "How can I help?"

"Do you live here?" Morgan asked.

"No, I'm in school. My older brother and I are both living on campus. Georgetown for both of us. After what happened to Papa, I came home to help out. Al, my brother, will be coming home after his finals."

"Georgetown, good school," Emily noted.

Isabella beamed, "We both got in on scholarships. Papa was very strict about studies, always pushed us to be the best…" she stopped for a moment to swallow back the emotion. "To be the best we could be."

"I'm sure he was very proud," Emily said.

Isabella nodded. "I believe that."

"Forgive me for mentioning this but the file we have says that neither of your parents spoke any English," Morgan commented.

Again she smiled. "That file is wrong. Papa taught himself and then us. All of us are bi-lingual. Mama's English isn't so good, but she can speak it when she needs to."

"Do you know," Emily started and now she faltered and Morgan knew why. What she had to ask, well it seemed a terrible question to put to someone who was grieving the loss of a father they so obviously adored. "Do you know if your parents were having any problems?"

"No," Isabella said instantly. "Nothing more than normal, I mean. They argued because Papa worked too hard, but they were happy. Their twenty-fifth anniversary was going to be in June."

"Did you know any of your father's friends?"

"No," she replied.

"They were good men," a voice said from the stairs. Morgan and Prentiss turned to face a smallish woman with big eyes. She had to be in late forties, but right now, the exhaustion and pain that she was wearing like a mask made her look a whole lot older.

"Mama," Isabella said, slipping immediately into Spanish. "You should be upstairs sleeping."

Morgan glanced over to Prentiss. Thankfully, even though his ability to speak the language was limited to frat boy insults, he could understand it just fine. No, this was more about studying the family interaction.

Trying to determine if they were hiding anything.

"I've slept enough," Maria DeSparto replied with an impatient wave of her hand. "And I wake up and your Papa is still not there. If these people…" she motioned to Morgan and Prentiss – "…can explain that, then this is where I should be."

Isabella immediately backed down. Maria turned to face Morgan and Prentiss and then with a kind of regal dignity, extended her hand. "Maria DeSparto."

"Agents Morgan and Prentiss of the FBI," Morgan introduced. She shook both of their hands and Morgan found himself impressed by her handshake. Firm and strong.

This was a woman who would survive simply because she didn't know how not to.

"You asked about my husbands friends, well they were all men like him. Boys who never really grew up. They liked to drink beer and play with the children. They could be irresponsible, but they were all good men. And not one of them would have ever hurt my husband."

Morgan nodded, realizing that it was the force of this woman, her sheer strength and presence which demanded that he accept what she was saying.

"Was he having any problems at work?" Emily pressed on. "Any difficult customers?"

"He worked in retail, Agent Prentiss," Maria replied. "Everyone he dealt with was on some level difficult. But if you're asking if there was someone specific, someone that stuck out, no, not that he told me."

"Mama, what about that man –"

Maria shot her daughter an annoyed look, but Morgan quickly grabbed onto the offered lead and gave it a good pull.

"That man?"

Maria sighed. "About a week before it happened, a man came into the shop. Alvarez had never seen him before. The man wandered the store for about an hour and then when Alvarez asked him to either buy something or leave, the man started cursing and rambling at him. Saying things like 'how do you like it now'. Very strange. Alvarez called the police but the man left then. To my knowledge he never showed up again." Then she shrugged. "I'm sure it was nothing."

"Probably not," Morgan agreed. "But we'll check on it just t make sure."

Maria nodded. Then, "You will find who did this, yes?"

"We will," Emily said. And Morgan realized that she'd beaten him to punch. A punch that both of them knew better to have gotten to.

You were never supposed to make promises you couldn't guarantee.

But this family, these kids, this woman, well they demanded justice.

They demanded to know who had taken their father from them.

Who had cracked their family clean in half.

They demanded the truth.

And he meant to give it to them.

Because in the end, no matter what he told himself, he was able to crawl back inside. He was able to look at the little boy who had lost his own father. The young man who knew what it felt like.

He was able to connect with their pain.

It just hurt like hell to do so.

* * *

The drive back was smoother, the traffic jam of earlier having been completely cleared up while they were at the DeSparto house.

Morgan, who was again driving, glanced over at Emily. She was on her cell, listening, waiting. And then, "Great. Thanks." She hung up and turned to him. "The shop Mr. DeSparto worked at is going to send the surveillance tapes over."

"Good."

She frowned. "Derek?"

"I'm okay," he replied. "Just thinking."

"About -?"

He laughed and it was an odd sound, not full of mirth at all. "And that's the question isn't it? There's so much to be thinking about. The mess with Reid and JJ, this case, that family."

"So we focus on the case," she suggested.

"That's the problem isn't it though? We always focus on the case and then everything else goes slipping through the cracks."

It occurred to her that they had somehow jumped tracks, each landing on the other ones. After all, it had been she who on the way to the house and been wondering why Hotch hadn't yet confronted Reid.

And now it was Morgan who was wondering why the job kept getting in the way, kept putting off the inevitable.

And still, "Cracks," she murmured. "This whole case feels like it's full of cracks."

Morgan said nothing, just kept driving.

"Even been to Hawaii?" she asked suddenly.

He blinked. "Yeah, a few years back. There's a great nude bea-" he stopped and laughed when he saw her expression. "Full of nice beaches," he finished.

"Nude ones?"

"I have no comment."

"Uh huh."

"Anyway, why do you ask?"

"Oh, I was just thinking –"

"So now it's your turn," he noted.

She chucked and continued, "About how nice it would be to lay on the beach and not think about anything but the waves and the alcohol."

"Yeah," he admitted. "But the last time I tried that, the job still found me."

"The job," she murmured. "Seems like every night when I go home, it's all I think about. Some part of the job."

"Then you realize it's not your job, it's your life. And you couldn't walk away if you wanted to."

"I had a date last week. With a nice guy, a smart guy. Even held the doors open for me. And I think if we'd gotten that far, he wouldn't have been pissed at me if I hadn't invited him in for a nightcap."

"But…"

"But it was a disaster. Halfway through, his phone rang. He said he had an emergency. Pretty sure his brother or his roommate called and gave him an out."

"That bad?"

She nodded.

"Ouch."

"Yeah and today? That woman's face," Prentiss said, a pained lilt to her voice. It was clear from the look in her eyes that she was seeing a vision of Maria DeSparto. Brave, but devastated. Not broken, but then only by the strength of her will alone. That and the need to take care of her family. "It's going to ruin my next date. I know it will."

"Because it sticks with you," Morgan said, understanding all too well. He was better than her at keeping the job out of his dating life but there had to be a reason why he was still single. Still just interested in flighty one night stands.

Maria DeSparto's face was as good a place as any to start.

"I wish it wouldn't. I don't know how Gideon does it. How he keeps all those people so close to him. I think it would drive me crazy."

Morgan laughed. "Gideon's already a little bit crazy or hadn't you noticed?"

"Still."

"Still," he admitted.

And then once again, there was silence.

Until the soft sound of beeping filled the SUV. Morgan glanced down at his pager, tipped it towards him so he could read it. "It's from Garcia," he told Prentiss. "She wants to see us as soon as we get in."

They exchanged a look then, both of them wondering "now what?"

TBC...


End file.
